A popular history of priestcraft in all ages and nations

POPULAR HISTORY

PRIESTCRAFT

IN ALL AGES AND NATIONS.

WILLIAM HOWITT.

Help us to save free Gospel from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose conscience is their maw.

Milton.

LONDON:

EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.

1833.

Manning and Co., Printers,
London-house Yard.

Oh ! Truth ! immortal Truth ! on what wild ground
Still hast thou trod through this unspiritual sphere !
The strong, the brutish, and the vile surround
Thy presence, lest thy streaming glory cheer
The poor, the many, without price, or bound.
Drowning thy voice, they fill the popular ear,
In thy high name, with canons, creeds, and laws,
Feigning to serve, that they may mar thy cause.

And the great multitude doth crouch and bear
The burden of the selfish. That emprize, —
That lofty spirit of Virtue which can dare
To rend the bands of error from all eyes,
And from the freed soul pluck each sensual care,
To them is but a fable. Therefore lies
Darkness upon the mental desart still,
And wolves devour, and robbers walk at will.

Yet, ever and anon, from thy bright quiver,
The flaming arrows of thy might are strown ;
And rushing forth, thy dauntless children shiver
The strength of foes who press too near thy throne.
Then, like the sun, or thy Almighty Giver,
Thy light is through the startled nations shown ;
And generous indignation tramples down
The sophist's web, and the oppressor's crown.

Oh ! might it burn for ever ! But in vain —
For vengeance rallies the alarmed host,
Who from men's souls draw their dishonest gain.
For tfcoe they smite, audaciously they boast,
Even while thy sons are in thy bosom slain.
Yet this is thy sure solace — that not lost,
Each drop of blood, each tear, — Cadmean seed,
Shall send up armed champions at thy need.

1827. W. H.

/[

ADVERTISEMENT.

This little work is a rapid attempt to present a con-
cise and concentrated view of universal Priestcraft, to
assist and strengthen the present disposition to abate
that nuisance in England. Had time been allowed,
it would have been easy to have worked it up into a
most luminous whole, and to have drawn upon many-
other sources ; but what I have here collected from
the best authorities, and said from the impulse of my
own mind, I think will be sufficient to establish any
disinterested person in the conviction, that priestcraft
is one of the greatest curses which has afflicted the
earth ; and in the persuasion, that till its hydra heads
are crushed there can be no perfect liberty.

There may be some who will differ from me as to
the theory of Bryant — but that does not affect the
main question. Whether the Arkite theory be cor-
rect or not, nothing is more certain than that Pagan-
ism had one common origin, and that that origin lies
far back in the early ages of the world. Nothing is
more certain than that priests have, in all ages, fol-
lowed one system — that of availing themselves of the
superstitions of the people for their own interested
motives ; and nothing better attested than the crimes
and delusions of that order of men treated of in this
volume.

VI ADVERTISEMENT.

There will be some who will exclaim when I come
to the English Church, oh ! the author is a dissenter !
— I am a dissenter ; and therefore, as a looker-on,
according to a favourite popular maxim, am likely to
have a truer view of the game than they who are
playing it. I am a dissenter ; and one of the most
sturdy, and ceremony-despising class ; and therefore,
having deserted " the beggarly elements " of state
creeds, am more anxious to release my fellow-men
from the thraldom of state priests. I am a dissenter;
and therefore, feeling the burden and the injustice of
being compelled to support a system whose utility I
deny, and whose corruptions need little labour of
proof, I have the greater reason to raise my voice
against it.

I am aware that I shall experience abundance of
abuse and hostility; but that is the certain fate of
every one who defends the truth. I only say —
" Fiat justitia ruat ccelum :" and I thank God that
I never yet paused to ask what is politic, but what is
right. I thank God, too, that neither fearing one
class of men, nor hoping aught from another, my
only motive has been, justice to all, and kindness to
the poor, — my only object, the spread of truth and
knowledge ; — and as for the result — let that be as it
may.

Nottingham, June 4th, 1833.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Page

The two Evil Principles, Kingcraft and Priestcraft,
co-eval in their origin — Innumerable Historians of
the one, but none singly and entirely of the other —
The real and monstrous Character of Priestcraft —
Evil Systems attacked in this work without mercy,
but not Men __._--.-l

CHAPTER II.

Paganism distinguished universally by the same great
leading Principles — supposed to originate in the
corruption of the Patriarchal Worship soon after the
Flood — Probable diffusion of Original Population —
Origin of the Doctrine of Three Gods, in Greece,
Egypt, Persia, Syria, among the Tartars, Chinese,
Goths, Americans, etc. — Of the Preservation of the
Ark in the Religious Ceremonies of all Pagan Na-
tions— Of the Doctrine of a Succession of Worlds,
and of a Deluge — Ancient Mysteries celebrated,
especially by the Greeks, Egyptians, Hindoos, and
Druids — Advantage taken by Priests of this great
system of Superstition 5

CHAPTER III.

Mythology of the Assyrians and Syrians — the horrors of
Moloch — Chemosh — Baal and Baal- Fires — Bryant's
Theory of the Cuthic Tribes agrees with the exist-
ence of Castes in all Pagan Nations — Spirit of the
Syrian Priests as shewn in the Jewish History — Vile
Deceptions of Priests — The Wife of the God —
Priestly Arts exposed by Daniel - - - 12

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

rn P*Se

The same system of Superstition and Priestcraft which
prevailed in Asia, existing also among the Celts and
Goths of ancient Europe — Every where the Priests
the dominant Caste — In Britain, Gaul, and Germany
their state shewn by Caesar andTacitus — The Notions,
Sacrifices, and Superstitions of Scandinavia. - .20

CHAPTER V.

The same system discovered, to the surprise of the learned,
in America — The Gods, Doctrines, and Practices of
the Northern Indians, Mexicans, and Peruvians —
Dominance of the Priests and Nobles, and Slavery
of the People— their bloody Sacrifices and fearful
Orgies, similar to those of the Asiatics — The amazing
number of their Human Sacrifices recorded by the
Spanish writers— Striking Picture of Priestcraft in
Southey's Madoc. ______ 31

CHAPTER VI.

The Priest-ridden condition of Egypt notorious — involved
in the same system of Priestcraft already noticed —
Dr. Robertson's Theory of the Uniformity of Pagan
Creeds insufficient, and why — Egyptian Superstitions
— Excessive Veneration of Animals, and consequent
singular Rites and Facts — Horrid and licentious
Customs— Policy of their Priests to conceal Know-
ledge from the People — place themselves above the
Nobles and even the Kings — regulate all the daily
actions of the Kings — Striking Illustrations of the
verity of the Greek accounts in the History of
Joseph — Priests supposed to have been sole Kings in
Egypt for ages. -- - - ... 45

CHAPTER VII.

The popular Theology of the Greeks — Another and more
Occult Theology — Effect of the Poetry of Homer on
the spirits of his countrymen — his noble Maxims —
Priestcraft compelled to adopt a nice policy by the
free spirit of the Greeks ; yet bloody and licentious
Rites introduced, and the people effectually enslaved
by means of Festivals, Games, Sacrifices, Oracles,
Augury, and Mysteries — The immense influence of

CONTENTS. IX

Page

Oracles — Description of the Mysteries — Description
of the Egyptian darkness with respect to them —
Taliesin's allusions to them — Priestly Avarice - 54

CHAPTER VIII.

India — Priestcraft in its boldest aspect — Doctrines, Sa-
crifices, and licentious Rites — Women of the Tem-
ple— Immense Wealth accumulated by the Brahmins
— seized by the Arabians — Mahmoud of Gazna —
his Feast at Canaugha — his Adventure at the
Temple of Sumnaut — Eternal Slavery stamped by
the Brahmins on the Hindoos by the institution of
Castes — Inviolable Sanctity and Immunities of the
Brahmins — The Sooders— The Chandelahs— Remarks 74

CHAPTER IX.

The Hebrews — Comparison of the Old Man of the Sea,
and the Old Man of the Church — The Hebrew
Priesthood the only one ever divinely ordained, yet
evil in its tendency, and fatal to the Nation — began
in Aaron in dastardly equivocation — shewed itself
in the Sons of Eli, in avarice and lewdness — and
finally crucified Christ - - 94

CHAPTER X.

Popery — Christ and Christianity — the latter speedily
corrupted — Acts by which the Papal Church seized
on power __---._ 100

CHAPTER XI.

Popery continued : Struggles of the Popes for power— -
The Emperors favour them on account of their in-
fluence with the People — Scandalous transactions
between them and the French monarchs — Pepin and
Charlemagne — Gregory VII., the notorious Hilde-
brand, asserts absolute power over Kings — his in-
tercourse with the Countess Matilda — claims the
right of installing Bishops — Further enormities of
the Popes — This example followed by the Bishops
and Clergy, who become Dukes and Nobles — Evil
influence of Councils - - - - - -110

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XII.

Page

Establishment of Monkery — Numbers and enormities of
the Monks — are the Spies and Champions of Po-
pery— their quarrels — Strange History of Jetzer— ^
Frauds — some gross ones practised in England —
Maid of Kent — Pilgrimage of Grace — Forgery of
the Decretals — Infinite modes of enslaving the Popu-
lar Mind — Relics, Pilgrimages, Crusades, Festivals,
Confessions, Purgatory, Pardons, Mass, Excommu-
nications, Inquisition, etc. — Treatment of learned
Men 121

CHAPTER XIII.

Popish Arrogance and Atrocities: The Pope pro-
claims himself Lord of the Universe — his Treat-
ment of Dandolo, of Frederick Barbarossa, and of
Henry IV. — sets up and dethrones Kings — Imitated
by the Clergy — Thomas a Becket — King John's
Humiliation — Papal Atrocities: Galileo — Massa-
cres of Protestants in the Netherlands — Massacre of
St. Bartholomew — Bloody Persecutions of the Vau-
dois — War of Extermination waged by the Pope in
Provence — Extinction of the Troubadours — Noble
Conduct of the young Count of Bezeirs — Rise of the
Inquisition - - - - - - -136

CHAPTER XIV.

Jesuits and Inquisitors — Pernicious Doctrines of the
Jesuits — Hudibras's Exposition of such Doctrines —
Loyola their founder, sets up, under the name of
General, another sort of Pope — The success of his
Plans— General Character and Progress of the Je-
suits— their Mercantile Concerns — their Conduct
in China — in Paraguay — in the European Coun-
tries— attempts on the Lives of Queen Elizabeth and
James I. — their Murder of Henry III. and Henry IV.
of France — The Inquisition — Introduced into most
Catholic Countries, but permanent in Spain — The
Atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition against the Jews,
Moors, and Lutherans — Excessive Power of the In-
quisitors— Cromwell's Threat — Limborch's Account
of the Proceedings of the Inquisition — Tortures —

CONTENTS. XI

Page

Auto-da-f6 described by Dr. Geddes — Suppression
of the Inquisition by Napoleon — its restoration by
Ferdinand — Present state of Catholic Countries - 150

CHAPTER XV.

English Church — Unfortunate circumstances under
which the Reformation began in England— Regal
power fatal to Religion — Arbitrary conduct of the
Tudors— Inquisition established in England under
the names of the Star Chamber and High Commis-
sion Court — Popish bias of Elizabeth — her com-
pletion of the Liturgy — Despotism of the Stuarts —
their Persecutions in England and Scotland — The
arbitrary spirit of Laud conducts himself and Charles
I. to the block — Laud's fondness for Popish Mum-
mery— His singular Consecration of St. Catherine's
Church — Heterogeneous materials of the English
Church, and consequent Schisms — it continues to
persecute till the Accession of William III. — Hope-
less and unalterable nature of State Religion — State
of the Clergy 178

CHAPTER XVI.

Ministerial Plan of Irish Church Reform — See of Derry
— Statements respecting the Irish Church — its
Revenues — Results of State Religion in Ireland —
English Church — Injustice of compelling Dissenters
to support the Establishment — Tithes — Inalterable
nature of State Religions — Curious Anecdotes —
Milton's opinion of a Stipendiary Clergy — Remarks 199

CHAPTER XVII.

Clerical Income — Salaries of the Bishops — Exposure of
the Abuse of Queen Anne's Bounty Fund, by the
Edinburgh Review — Instances of the continuance of
these Abuses— Pluralities, and Curates' Stipends —
The Universities — Milton's opinion of College Edu-
cation— Ecclesiastical Courts — Sir David Lindsey's
Satire on them —Absurdity of the popular Belief in
the Consecration of Burial Grounds — Fees of Con-
secration— Awkward facts respecting Family Vaults
— Instance of Prelatical Despotism - - -216

Xll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Page

Evils of the system of Church Patronage — Simony, and
almost all the Abuses in the Church flow from it —
Strange Defence of the Church by a Clergyman —
Proofs of the beneficial effects of moderate Clerical
Incomes — Scotch and German Clergy — False notions
of Gentility held by our Clergy — Decker's Declara-
tion that Christ was a true Gentleman — What Cler-
gymen might be — Instances of what they are under
the private Patronage system — Milton and Spelman's
opinions of Surplice Fees ----- 245

CHAPTER XIX.

Confirmation in the Country — its Picturesque and Poeti-
cal Appearance — its Licentious Consequences, arising
from the Apathy of the Clergy - 261

CHAPTER XX.

Retrospective View of the Effects of Priestcraft — The
great Moral and Political Lesson it teaches — Con-
cluding Remarks ___-.. 270

PRIESTCRAFT IN ALL AGES.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL VIEW OF PRIESTCRAFT.

This unfortunate world has been blasted in all ages
by two evil principles — Kingcraft and Priestcraft —
that, taking advantage of human necessities, in
themselves not hard — salutary, and even beneficial
in their natural operation — the necessity of civil
government, and that of spiritual instruction, have
warped them cruelly from their own pure direction,
and converted them into the most odious, the most
terrible and disastrous scourges of our race. These
malign powers have ever begun, as it were, at the
wrong end of things. Kingcraft, seizing upon the
office of civil government, not as the gift of popular
choice, and to be filled for the good of nations, but
with the desperate hand of physical violence, has
proclaimed that it was not made for man, but man
for it — that it possessed an inherent and divine right
to rule, to trample upon mens' hearts, to violate their
dearest rights, to scatter their limbs and their blood
at its pleasure upon the earth ; and, in return for
its atrocities, to be worshipped on bended knee, and
hailed as a god. Its horrors are on the face of every
nation ; its annals are written in gore in all civilized

B

2 PRIESTCRAFT

climes; and, where pen never was known, it has
scored its terrors in the hearts of millions, and left
its traces in deserts of everlasting desolation, and
in the ferocious spirits of abused and brutalized
hordes. What is all the history of this wretched
planet but a mass of its bloody wrath and detestable
oppressions, whereby it has converted earth into a
hell ; men into the worst of demons ; and has turned
the human mind from its natural pursuit of know-
ledge, and virtue, and social happiness, into a career
of blind rage, bitter and foolish prejudices ; an en-
tailment of awful and crime-creating ignorance ; and
has held the universal soul of man in the blackest
and most pitiable of bondage ? Countless are its
historians ; we need not add one more to the un-
availing catalogue : but, of

That sister-pest, congr6gator of slaves

Into the shadow of its pinions wide,

I do not know that there has been one man who
has devoted himself solely and completely to the
task of tracing its course of demoniacal devastation.
Many of its fiendish arts and exploits, undoubtedly,
are embodied in what is called ecclesiastical history ;
many are presented to us in the chronicles of king-
craft ; for the two evil powers have ever been inti-
mately united in their labours. They have mutually
and lovingly supported each other ; knowing that
individually they are "weak as stubble," yet con-
jointly,

Can bind
Into a mass irrefragably firm
The axes and the rods which awe mankind.

Thus, through this pestilential influence, we must
admit that too much of its evil nature has been
forced on our observation incidentally ; but no one
clear and complete picture of it has been presented

IN ALL AGES. 3

to our view. It shall now be my task to supply to
the world this singular desideratum. It shall be my
task to shew that priestcraft in all ages and all
nations has been the same ; that its nature is one,
and that nature essentially evil ; that its object is
self-gratification and self-aggrandizement ; the means
it uses— the basest frauds, the most shameless de-
lusions, practised on the popular mind for the acqui-
sition of power ; and that power once gained, the
most fierce and bloody exercise of it, in order to
render it at once awful and perpetual. I shall shew
that nothing is so servilely mean in weakness, so
daring in assumption, so arrogant in command, —
earth, heaven, the very throne and existence of God
himself being used but as the tools of its designs, and
appealed to with horrible . impudence in the most
shameless of its lies. That, professing itself merciful,
nothing on this earth, which is by no means wanting
in scenes of terror, has ever exhibited itself in shapes
of equal cruelty — cruelty, cold, selfish, and impas-
able ; that, claiming sanctity as its peculiar attribute,
nothing has been so grossly debauched and licentious ;
that, assuming the mien of humility, nothing is so
impiously proud, so offensively insolent ; that, pro-
claiming to others the utter vanity of worldly goods,
its cupidity is insatiable — of worldly honours, its
ambition is boundless ; that, affecting peace and
purity, it has perpetrated the most savage wars, ay,
in the very name of heaven, and spread far and wide
the contagion of sensuality ; that, in Europe, usurp-
ing the chair of knowledge, the office of promulgating
the doctrines of a religion whose very nature over-
flows with freedom, and love, and liberal enlighten-
ment, it has locked up the human mind for more than
a thousand years in the dens of ignorance ; mocked
it with the vilest baubles, the most imbecile legends ;

b 2

4 PRIESTCRAFT

made it a prey to all the restless and savage passions
of an uncultured and daily irritated soul ; robbed it
of the highest joys of earth or heaven — those of the
exercise of a perfected intellect and a benevolent
spirit ; and finally, by its tyrannies, its childish
puerilities, its inane pomps and most ludicrous dog-
mas, overwhelmed the middle ages with the horrors
of an iron bigotry, and the modern world with the
tenfold horrors of infidel heartlessness and the wars
of atheism.

This is a mighty and an awful charge. Alas ! the
annals of all people are but too affluent in proofs of its
justice. I shall prove tins through the most popular
histories, that the general reader may, if he please,
easily refer to them, and be satisfied of the correctness
of my statements. While I proceed, however, to
draw these proofs from the most accessible works, I
shall carefully war alone with the principle, not with
individual men. The very worst systems have often
involved in their blind intricacies the best of men :
and in some of those which it will be my duty, as a
man, to denounce, there have been, and there are at
the present moment, numbers of sincere and excel-
lent beings, who are an honour and a blessing to their
race.

IN ALL AGES.

CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF PAGANISM.

Priestcraft and kingcraft began at pretty much the
same time, and that at an early age of the world,
to exercise their baneful influence over it. Whether
they existed, and if so, what they did, in the ante-
diluvian world, we know not, and it concerns us
little : but immediately after the flood, they became
conspicuous. Nimrod is usually supposed to be
the first monarch ; the first man who, not satisfied
with the mild patriarchal rule over his brethren, is
believed to have collected armies, dispossessed the
peaceful children of Shem of part of their territories
by violence, and swayed all whom he could by the
terrors of overwhelming force. Priestcraft, it is evi-
dent by many indubitable signs, was busily at work
at the same moment. Certain common principles
running through idolatrous worship in every known
part of the globe, have convinced the most acute and
industrious antiquarians, that every pagan worship
in the world has the same origin; and that origin
could have coincided only with some early period,
when the whole human family was together in one
place. This fact, now that countries, their habits
and opinions, have been so extensively examined,
would have led learned men of the present day, had
not the Bible been in our possession, to the confident
conclusion that mankind had, at first, but one source,
and one place of abode : that their religious opinions

6 PRIESTCRAFT

had been at that time uniform : and that, dispersing
from that point of original residence, they had carried
these opinions into all regions of the earth, where,
through the progress of ages, they had received many
modifications, been variously darkened and disfigured,
but not to such an extent as to extinguish those
great leading features which mark them as the off-
spring of one primeval parent. But the Bible not
only shews that such was the origin of the various
human families, not only shews the time when they
dwelt in one place, when and how they were thence
dispersed, but also furnishes us with a certain key
to the whole theory of universal paganism.

We see at once that every system of heathen my-
thology had its origin in the corruption of patriarchal
worship before the dispersion at Babel. There the
whole family of man was collected in the descendants
of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhat ; and
thence, at that time, they were scattered abroad by
the hand of God over the world. Japhat colonized
the whole of Europe ; all those northern regions
called Tartary and Siberia ; and, in process of time,
by the easy passage of Behring's Straits, the entire
continent of America. His son Gomer seems clearly
to have been the father of those who were originally
called Gomerians ; and by slight variations, were
afterwards termed Comarians, Cimmerians, Cymbri,
Cumbri, Cambri, and Umbri ; and, in later years,
Celts, Gauls, and Gaels. These extended themselves
over the regions north of Armenia and Bactriana ;
thence over nearly all Europe, and first planted
Britain and Ireland. Magog, Tubal, and Mesech,
as we learn from Ezekiel, dwelt far to the north of
Judea, and became the ancestors of the great Sclavo-
nic or Sarmatian families ; the name of Magog still
existing in the appellations of Mogli, Monguls, and

IN ALL AGES. 7

Mongolians ; those of Tubal and Mesech, in To-
bolsk!, Moschici, and Moscow and Moscovites :
Madai was father of the Medes, and Javan of the
original inhabitants of Greece, where we may trace
the names of his sons Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim,
and Dodanim, in Elis, Tarsus, Cittium, and Dodona.

The posterity of Shem were confined to southern
Asia ; founding by his sons Elam, or Persia, Ashur,
or Assyria, a province of Iran, or Great Assyrian
empire of Nimrod, whose son Cush appears to have
subdued these descendants of Shem. Arphaxad
became the father of the Hebrews and other kindred
nations ; his descendant Peleg founded Babylonia ;
and Joktan, stretching far towards the east, probably
became the father of the Hindoos. Ophir, one of the
sons of Joktan, is often mentioned in Scripture as
dwelling in a land of gold, to which voyages were
made by ships issuing from the Red Sea, and sailing
eastward; but Elam and Cush occupied the whole
sea-coast of Persia, as far as the Indus. This, there-
fore, brings us to the great peninsular of Hindostan
for the seat of Ophir. Lud, the fourth son of Shem,
is presumed to be the founder of Lydia ; and Aram,
the fifth, the father of Mesopotamia and Syria.

Ham was at first mixed with Shem throughout
southern Asia, and became the sole occupant of
Africa. Of his sons, Cush became the founder of
Iran, or Central Asia, the great Assyrian empire,
and the progenitor of all those called Cushim, Cushas,
Cuths, Goths, Scuths, Scyths, Scots, or Gauls.
Mizraim peopled Egypt ; Phut, the western frontier
of Egypt, and thence passing west and south, spread
over the greater part of Africa: and Canaan, it is
well known, peopled the tract afterwards inhabited by
the Israelites.

Thus, it is said, was the world peopled ; and that

PRIESTCRAFT

it was thus peopled, we learn not only from Moses>
but from profane writers; and find both accounts
confirmed by abundant evidence in the manners,
traditions, language, and occupance of the different
races at the present day. Sir William Jones found
only three great original languages to exist — Arabic,
Sclavonic, and Sanscrit: and these three all issue
from one point, central Asia, whence, by consent of
the most ancient records and traditions of the great
primeval nations, their original ancestors spread.

But before they were thus scattered, they had
corrupted the religious doctrines they had received
from their great progenitor, Noah ; or rather, had set
them aside, in order to deify Noah and his three sons,
whom they had come to regard as a re-appearance of
Adam and his three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth. The
singular coincidence of circumstances between Adam
and Noah, forced this upon their imaginations. Adam,
the first man, and father of the first world, — and
Noah, the first man, and father of the second world,
had each three sons conspicuous in history ; and of
these three, one in each case was a bad one — Cain
and Ham. Led by this, to consider the second family
but an avater of the first, they regarded them as
immortal, and worshipped them. Hence we have in
all pagan mythologies a triad of principal gods. In
the Greek — Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; in the
Hindoo — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; in the Egyp-
tian— Osiris, Horus, and Typhon ; one of whom, in
each case, is a deity of a dark nature, like Cain and
Ham. The Persians had their Ormuzd, Mithras,
and Ahriman; the Syrians, their Monimus, Aziz,
and Ares ; the Canaanites, their Baal-Shalisha, or
self- triplicated Baal ; the Goths, their Odin, Vile,
and Ve, who are described as the three sons of the
mysterious cow, a symbol of the ark ; the Jakuthi

IN ALL AGES. 9

Tartars, their Artugon, Schugo-teugon, and Tangara,
the last, even in name, the Tanga-tanga of the
Peruvians: for this singular fact stops not with the
great primitive nations ; it extends itself to all others,
even to those discovered in modern times. Like
China and Japan, the Peruvians were found, on the
discovery of America, to have their triads, Apomti,
Churunti, and Intiquoaqui; or the father-sun, the
brother-sun, and the son-sun. The Mexicans had
also their Mexitli, Tlaloc, andTezcallipuca; the last,
the god of repentance. The Virginians, Iroquois,
and various nations of North- American Indians, held
similar notions. The New Zealanders believe that
three gods made the first man, and the first woman
from the man's rib ; and their general term for bone
is Eve. The Otaheitans had a similar idea.

Thus, far and wide, to the very hidden ends of the
earth, spread this notion of a triad; and hence, in
the second century, it found its way, through Justin
Martyr, into the Christian church.

The post-diluvians likewise held the Ark in the
most sacred veneration. It was that into which their
great father and all living things had entered and
floated away safely over the destroying waters. It
was the type of the earth into which Adam had
entered by death ; and, as they supposed, re-appeared
in Noah. Hence, an ark is to be found in nearly
every system of pagan worship. After it were fash-
ioned the most ancient temples. It was borne in the
most religious processions of Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus,
Ceres, and amongst the Druids ; and has been found,
to the astonishment of discoverers and missionaries,
amongst the Mexicans, the North- American Indians,
and the South-sea Islanders.

Hence, also, the doctrine of a succession of worlds,
from the supposed re-appearance of Adam and his

10 PRIESTCRAFT

three sons, in Noah and his three sons, which has
expanded itself into the great system of transmigra-
tions and avaters of the Hindoos. Hence, also, the
traditions of a universal deluge to be found amongst
all the ancient nations; amongst the wild tribes of
America; amongst the Hindoos in the east, and the
Celts in the west. Hence, the close connexion of
lakes with heathen temples; and hence, lastly, the
ancient mysteries, which were but a symbolical repre-
sentation of entering the ark, or great cave of death
and life ; which, as the old world was purified by the
flood, was supposed to purify and confer a new life on
those who passed through those mysteries, which
were celebrated, with striking similarity in Greece,
India, Egypt, and amongst the Druids in these
islands. These, and many other general features of
paganism — for abundant illustration of which, I refer
my reader to the learned works of Calmet, Bryant,
Faber, and Spencer, De Legibus Ritualibus Hebras-
orum — sufficiently testify to the common origin of all
heathen systems of worship ; and we shall presently
find how amply the priests of all ages and all the Gen-
tile nations, have laid hold on these rich materials,
and converted them into exuberant sources of wealth,
and power, and honour to themselves, and of terror, de-
ception, and degradation to their victims — the people.
It may, perhaps, be said that they themselves were
but the slaves of superstition, in common with those
they taught ; and that it would be unfair to charge
them with the wilful misleading of their auditors,
when they themselves were blinded by the common
delusions of their times and countries. But we must
recollect, that though the people were taught by them
to believe, and could not, in dark times, easily escape
the influence of their doctrines and practices, studi-
ously adapted to dazzle and deceive the senses, yet it

IN ALL AGES.

was impossible for the priests to enter upon their
office, without discovering that those terrors were
fictitious, — without finding that they were called
upon to maintain a series of utter fallacies. The
people might listen to oracles, uttered amid a multi-
tude of imposing pageants, and awful solemnities ; in
the sacred gloom of temples and groves ; and might
really believe that a god spoke. But where were the
priests ? Behind these scenes ! — and must soon have
found that, instead of the inspiration of a present god,
they themselves were the actors of the vilest imposi-
tions ; which, through the temptations of power, and
fame, and wealth, they became the willing means of
fixing on their countrymen.

When did any one, in any nation, on discovering
that he had entered an order of impostors, renounce
their connexion, and abandon his base calling?
Never! — the spirit of priestcraft was too subtly
potent for him. He either acquiesced readily in
measures, which were to him, pregnant with honour,
ease, and abundance ; or saw that instant destruction
awaited him, from the wily and merciless spirit of
priestcraft, if he gave but a symptom of abjuring, or
disclosing its arcana of gainful deceit. As the entrance
of the Adytus of the mysteries, so the vestibule of
the priestly office was probably guarded by naked
swords, and oaths full of destruction to the back-
slider. Be that as it may, there is not a fact on the
face of history more conspicuous than this — that no
order of men has ever clung to the service of its
caste, or has fulfilled its purposes, however desperate,
or infamously cruel they might be, with the same
fiery and unflinching zeal as priests.

12 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER III.

MYTHOLOGY OF THE ASSYRIANS AND SYRIANS.

We have now seen how idolatry was diffused over
the globe, forming a field of no less amplitude than
the world itself for priestcraft to exercise itself in ;
full of ignorance, and full of systems prolific in all
the wild creation of superstition so auspicious to
priestly desires ; and we shall soon see that such
advantages were not neglected by that evil power,
but were eagerly laid hold on, and by its indefa-
tigable activity the earth was speedily overrun by
every curse, and horror, and pollution, that can fix
itself on unfortunate humanity.

We shall take a hasty survey of its progress in the
most ancient nations, Syria and Assyria ; we shall
then pass rapidly into Scandinavia and the British
Isles, following the course of Druidism ; and, without
regard to the order of time, glance at the confirma-
tion of this ancient state of things, by that which
was found to exist at the time of their discovery in
America and the isles of the Indian Ocean. By this
plan we shall leave our course clear in a direct pro-
gress through ancient Egypt, Greece, and Hindostan ;
where we shall leave the review of priestcraft as it
existed in Paganism, and contemplate its aspect in
Judea, under the direct ordinances of God ; then,
under Christianity, in the Romish church; and,

IN ALL AGES. 13

finally, in the ecclesiastical establishment of our own
country.

The Bible furnishes us with abundant evidences
of what idolatry was in Syria, and the neighbouring
kingdoms of Philistia, Moab, Amalek and others.
The principal gods of these countries were Baal,
Moloch, and Chemosh : but the number of false
gods altogether was extremely numerous. The
more gods the more shrines, the more priestly gains
and influence. The principal characteristics of the
whole idol dynasty, were horrible cruelty and gross
licentiousness. Chemosh was the god of the Moab-
ites, and his rites were particularly distinguished by
their lasciviousness. In Syria those of Ashtaroth, or
Astarte, the queen of heaven, were similar ; but Baal
and Moloch were the very impersonations of savage
atrocity. Moloch is represented as a huge metallic
image in a sitting posture, which, on days of sacrifice,
was heated to redness in a pit of fire, and young
children were brought as victims, and placed in his
extended and burning arms, where they were con-
sumed in the most exquisite agonies, while the
devilish band of priests and their retainers drowned
their piercing cries with the stunning din of drums,
cymbals, horns, and trumpets.

Baal, however, was the principal idol of all those
countries ; and — associated as he was in idea with the
sun, as was the chief god of all pagan nations, from
a fanciful process of imagination, treated of at large
by writers on this subject, but which we need not
trace here — to him, on almost every lofty eminence,
fires were kindled at stated periods, and human sa-
crifices performed in the midst of unbounded and
infernal glee. The Beal-fires, or Baal-fires, kindled
on the mountains of Scotland and Ireland by the
peasantry at Beltane, or May Eve, are the last remains
of this most ancient and universal superstition.

14

PRIESTCRAFT

When we recollect over what an immense extent
of country, in fact over the greater part of the habit-
able globe, this idolatry extended ; and the number of
ages, from the time of the flood to the time of Chris-
tianity, a period of upwards of two thousand years ;
what a terrible sum of miseries must have been
inflicted on our race by the diabolical zeal and
cupidity of pagan priestcraft. From the temple
of Buddh and Jaggernath in India, to the stony
circles of Druidism in Europe ; from the snowy
wastes of Siberia and Scandinavia in the north, to
the most southern lands in Africa and America, the
fires of these bloody deities rejoiced the demoniac
priests and consumed the people.

Mr. Bryant contends, and his theory seems both
supported by strong facts and is generally admitted
by intelligent historians, that the kindred of Nimrod,
the tribe of Cush, a haughty and dominant race, dis-
daining labour or commerce, disdaining all profes-
sions but those of arms or the priesthood, followed
the progress of diffusive population into all regions,
and either subduing the original settlers or insinuat-
ing themselves amongst them, as they had been their
general corruptors, became their generals, priests,
and kings. This theory certainly agrees well with
what the researches of late years have made known of
the great tribes of emigration from the east ; agrees
well with what we know of the Gothic or Cuthic na-
tions, and with the establishment of the despotism
of the feudal system. Castes, which remain so un-
broken to the present day in Hindostan, and on
which we shall have presently to remark, prevailed,
in a greater or less degree, all over the world. In
Egypt, Herodotus shews it to have been the case.
None but kings and priests were noble. In Greece
they had their race of demi-gods, or descendants of
the ancient Pelasgi, or Cuthites, from whom their

IN ALL AGES. 15

priests, augurs, and kings were chosen. Such was
the case amongst the Gauls and Britons. The Druids
were a sacred and noble caste, who disdained to work
or mingle with the people ; an insult to one of whom
was instant death, as it is with the Brahmins at the
present day : and the strong spirit of caste through-
out all the feudal nations of Europe, not only all
past history, but present circumstances, shew us.
Be the origin of dominant castes what it may, no-
thing is more conspicuous than their existence, and
the evils, scorns, and ignominious burdens they have
heaped upon the people.

Of the rancorous activity of the heathen priest-
hood to proselyte and extend their influence on all
sides, the Jewish history is full. Scarcely had the
Hebrews escaped from Egypt and entered the Desert,
when the Moabites came amongst them with their
harlot daughters, carrying beneath their robes the
images of Chemosh, and scattering among the frail
Jews the mingled fires of sensual and idolatrous pas-
sion. Through the whole period of the adminis-
tration of the Judges, they were indefatigably at
work, and brought upon the backsliding Hebrews
the vengeance of their own living and indignant God.
The wise and magnificent Solomon they plucked
from the height of his peerless knowledge and glory,
and rendered the reigns of his successors continual
scenes of reproof and desolation, till the whole nation
was swept into captivity.

There cannot be a more expressive instance of the
daring hardihood and fanatic zeal of the priests of
Baal, nor a finer one of their defeat and punishment,
than that given on Mount Carmel in the days of
Ahab and Jezebel. Those pestilential wretches had
actually, under royal patronage, corrupted or destroy-
ed the whole legitimate priesthood. There were but

16 PRIESTCRAFT

left seven thousand, even of the people, " who had
not bowed the knee to Baal, nor kissed him." They
were in pursuit of the noble prophet himself, when
he came forth and challenged them to an actual proof
of the existence of their respective deities.

It may be argued that the readiness with which
they accepted this challenge, is sufficient evidence
that they themselves were believers in the existence
of their deity ; and it may be that some were stupid,
or fanatic enough to be so ; but it is far likelier that,
possessing royal patronage, and a whole host of base
and besotted supporters, they hoped to entrap the
solitary man : that, knowing the emptiness of their
own pretensions, they were of opinion that Elijah's
were equally empty, and therefore came boldly to a
contest, in which if neither party won, an individual
against a host would easily be sacrificed to priestly
fury and popular credulity. Be it as it might,
nothing is more certain than that the ferocious zeal of
priestcraft, for its own objects, has been in all ages so
audacious as not to fear rushing, in the face of the
world, on the most desperate attempts. This event
was most illustrative of this blind sacerdotal hardi-
hood ; for, notwithstanding their signal exposure and
destruction, yet in every successive age of the Hebrew
kingdom, the pagan priests ceased not to solicit the
Israelites to their ruin. The Hebrew kings, ever
and anon, awoke from the trance of delusion into
which they drew them, and executed ample vengeance ;
hewing down their groves, and overturning their
altars ; but it was not till the general captivity, — till
Judah was humbled for a time, before Babylon, and
Israel was wholly and for ever driven from the land,
that the pest was annihilated.

The mythology of Assyria was of much the same
nature; — Baal, however, being there held in far

Li tar

IN ALL AGES. 17

higher honour than all other gods ; for the priesthood,
according to the servile cunning of its policy, had
nattered the royal house by deifying its founder, and
identifying him with the sun by the name of Belus, or
Bel. What I have already said of this god will
suffice ; and I shall only state that, as the priesthood
there had shewn its usual character of adulation to
the high, and cruelty to the low, so it displayed
almost more than its customary lewdness. Herodotus
tells us, that " at the top of the tower of Belus, in a
chapel, is placed a couch magnificently adorned : and
near it a table of solid gold; but there is no statue in
the place. No man is suffered to sleep here, but a
female occupies the apartment, whom the Chaldean
priests affirm their deity selects from the whole
nation as the object of his pleasures. They declare
that their deity enters this apartment by night, and
reposes upon this couch. A similar assertion is
made by the Egyptians of Thebes ; for in the interior
part of the temple of the Thebean Jupiter, a woman,
in like manner, sleeps. Of these two' women, it is
presumed, that neither of them have any communica-
tion with the other sex. In which predicament, the
priestess of the temple of Paterae, in Lycia, is also
placed. Here is no regular oracle ; but whenever a
divine communication is expected, the woman is
obliged to pass the preceding night in the temple."
That is, the priests made their god the scape-goat of
their own unbridled sensuality ; and, under the pre-
text of providing a sacrifice of beauty to the deity,
selected the most lovely woman of the nation for
themselves.

This species of detestable deception, seems to have
been carried on to an enormous extent in ancient
times. If we are to believe all the Grecian stories,

18 PRIESTCRAFT

and especially the Homeric ones, of the origin of their
demi-gods, we can only explain them in this manner.
A circumstance of the same nature is related by
Josephus ; which is curious, because the priests of the
temple in that case, were induced by a young noble
to inveigle a married lady of whom he had become
enamoured, into the temple, under pretence that the
god had a loving desire of her company, and shewed
that the gratification, not merely of themselves, but
of men in power, by frauds, however infamous or
diabolical, has been always a priestly practice.

But to return to Assyria. The seeds of licentious-
ness, sown by their early priests, grew and spread
abundantly in after ages. When the Assyrian was
merged in the Babylonian empire, the orgies of the
temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, were in-
famous above all others; so much so, that every
woman, whether high or low, was bound by the
national practice to present herself before the temple
once in her life, and there submit to prostitute
herself with whoever first chose her ; and the price
of her shame was paid into the treasury, to swell the
revenues of the priests. So horrible a fact has been
doubted ; but Herodotus seriously asserts it, and it
has been confirmed by other authorities.

That these crafty and voluptuous priests were not
amongst those deceived by their own devices, but
were solely deceivers, living in honour and abundance
by juggling the people, we need no better testimony
than that of the story of Bel and the Dragon. They
are there represented as setting before the idol
splendid banquets, which he was asserted to devour
in the night ; but Daniel scattering sand on the floor,
shewed the people in the morning the footsteps of the
priests, their wives and children, who had, as they

IN ALL AGES. 19

were regularly accustomed, nocked into the temple
at night, and helped the god to dispatch his viands.

Though this story is one of those called apocryphal,
it is certainly so far true, that it shews what were the
opinions of the wise at that day, of the priests,
founded, no doubt, on sufficient observation.

c 2

20 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER IV.

CELTS AND GOTHS.

Without following minutely the progress of original
migration, from east to west, through the great
Scythian deserts, we will now at once open upon the
human family as it appeared in Europe, when the
Romans began to extend their conquests into the
great forests and wild lands of its north-western
regions: and here, again, we behold with surprise,
how exactly the nations had preserved those features
of idolatrous superstition which I have before stated
to be universal, and which we have been contemplating
in central Asia.

Part of southern Europe appears to have been
peopled by one great branch of the descendants of
Japhet, under the name of Sclavonians, and to have
maintained their settlements against all future comers :
but another great branch, the Gomerians, or Celts,
had been followed by the warlike and domineering
Goths, and had, in some cases, received from them
teachers and governors ; in others, had been totally
expelled by them, or lost character, language, and
every thing, in their overwhelming tide. The north-
ern parts of Britain, Ireland, Wales, Gaul, and some
other districts, retained the Celtic character ; while
England, Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, and some
other tracts, became decidedly Gothic. Of these facts,

IN ALL AGES. 21

the very languages of the respective countries, at the
present day, remain living proofs. But, whatever
was the name, the language, or the government of
the different parts of Europe, everywhere its religion
was essentially the same ; everywhere the same
Cuthic race of domineering priests. Everywhere,
says a sagacious antiquarian, " we find, first, an order
of priests ; secondly, an order of military nobles ;
thirdly, a subjugated multitude ; and institutions, the
spirit of which, is that of thrusting the lower orders
from all place and authority, and systematically doom-
ing them to an unalterable state of servile depression."
Whoever will examine the system of the Druids, as
he may in Toland's history of them, in Borlace's
Cornwall, or Davis's Celtic Mythology, will be per-
fectly convinced of its identity with that of Persia,
Egypt, and Hindostan. Their triads, their own as-
sumed sanctity of character, their worship of the god
Hu, the Buddhu of the east ; their traditions of the
flood; the ark, which their circular stone temples
symbolized ; their human sacrifices ; their doctrine
of transmigration ; and other abundant characteristics,
are not to be mistaken. Dr. Borlace was so struck
with the perfect resemblance of the Druids to the
Persian Magi and the Indian Brahmins, that he
declared it was impossible to doubt their identity.
Mr. Rowland argues in the same manner with regard
to the Irish Druids, who, as usual, constituted the
first of the three classes into which the community
was divided. He feels assured that they must have
been Magi. Long indeed before our time, Pliny had
made the same remark, applying the very term of
Magi to them.

In Gaul, Caesar found precisely the same state of
things — the same dominant class ; and has left so
lucid an account of them, that his representation will,

22 PRIESTCRAFT

at once, place before us the actual condition of both
Gaul and Britain. " Over all Gaul there are only-
two orders of men in any degree of honour and
esteem : for the common people are little better than
slaves ; attempt nothing of themselves ; and have no
share in the public deliberations. As they are gene-
rally oppressed with debt, heavy tributes, or the
exactions of their superiors, they make themselves
vassals to the great, who exercise over them the same
jurisdiction that masters do over slaves. The two
orders of men with whom, as we have said, all autho-
rity and distinctions reside, are the Druids and nobles.
The Druids preside in matters of religion, have the
care of public and private sacrifices, and interpret the
will of the gods. They have the direction and education
of the youth, by whom they are held in great honour.
In almost all controversies, whether public or private,
the decision is left to them ; and if any crime is com-
mitted, any murder perpetrated, if any dispute arises
touching an inheritance, or the limits of adjoining
estates, in all such cases they are supreme judges.
They decree rewards and punishments ; and if any one
refuse to submit to their sentence, whether magistrate
or private man, they interdict him the sacrifices.
This is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted
upon the Gauls ; because, such as are under this
prohibition, are considered as impious and wicked ;
all men shun them, and decline their conversation
and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the con-
tagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have
recourse to the law for justice, nor are capable of any
public office. The Druids are all under one chief.
Upon his death, a successor is elected by suffrage ;
but sometimes they have recourse to arms before the
election can be brought to issue. Once a year, they
assemble at a consecrated place in the territories of

IN ALL AGES. 23

the Carnutes, whose country is supposed to he in the
middle of Gaul. Hither such as have any suits
depending, flock from all parts, and submit implicitly
to their decrees. Their institution is supposed to
have come originally from Britain ; and even at this
day, such as are desirous of being perfect in it, travel
thither for instruction. The Druids never go to war ;
are exempt from taxes and military service, and enjoy
all manner of immunities. These mighty encourage-
ments induce multitudes of their own accord to follow
that profession, and many are sent by their parents.
They are taught to repeat a great number of verses
by heart, and often spend twenty years upon this in-
stitution ; for it is deemed unlawful to commit their
statutes to writing, though on other matters, private
or public, they use Greek characters. They seem to
have adopted this method for two reasons, — to hide
their mysteries from the knowledge of the vulgar, and
to exercise the memory of their scholars. It is one of
their principal maxims, that the soul never dies, but
after death, passes from one body to another. They
teach likewise many things relative to the stars, the
magnitude of the world and our earth, the nature of
things, and the power and prerogative of the im-
mortal gods.

" The other order of men is the nobles, whose
study and occupation is war. Before Caesar's arrival
in Gaul, they were almost every year at war, offensive
or defensive; and they judge of the power and
quality of their nobles, by the vassals and number of
men they keep in pay.

" The whole nation of the Gauls is extremely
addicted to superstition, whence, in threatening dis-
tempers, and the imminent danger of war, they make
no scruple to sacrifice men, or engage themselves by
vow to such sacrifices ; in which case, they make use

24 PRIESTCRAFT

of the ministry of the Druids ; for it is a prevalent
opinion amongst them, that nothing but the life of
man can atone for the life of man, insomuch that
they have established even public sacrifices of this
kind. Some prepare huge Colossuses of osier twigs,
into which they put men alive, and setting fire to
them, those within expire amongst the flames. They
prefer for victims such as have been convicted of
theft, robbery, or other crimes, believing them the
most acceptable to the gods: but when such are
wanting, the innocent are made to suffer.

" The Gauls fancy themselves to be descended
from the god Pluto, which, it seems, is an established
tradition amongst the Druids ; and for this reason
they compute time by nights, not by days.

" The men have power of life and death over their
wives and families ; and when any father of a family
of illustrious rank dies, his relations assemble, and
upon the least ground of suspicion, put even his wives
to the torture, like slaves. Their funerals are magni-
ficent and sumptuous, according to their quality.
Everything that was dear to the deceased, even
animals, are thrown into the fire ; and formerly, such
of their slaves and clients that they loved most,
sacrificed themselves at the funeral of their lords."

In this valuable account, the striking resemblance
of the Druids to the Brahmins, must impress every
one, — not the least their funeral rites, and doctrine of
metempsychosis. But there are some other things
equally curious. We have here the Ban, — that
tremendous ecclesiastical engine, which the Romish
church most probably borrowed of the Goths ; and
which we shall find it hereafter wielding to such
appalling purpose. The tradition of the Druids, that
they are descended of Pluto, is, too, a most remark-
able circumstance ; agreeing so perfectly with the

IN ALL AGES. 25

theory of Bryant, that they were Cuths, the descend-
ants of Ham, the Pluto of mythology.

Caesar proceeds to give Roman names to Gallic
gods. This was the common practice of the Romans ;
a fact, which, as it is known from other sources that
the Druids never gave them such names, only proves
that the Romans named them from their obvious
attributes ; again confirming Bryant's theory, that
however the ethnic gods be named, they are essen-
tially identical. Caesar also adds, that the Germans
differed widely from the Gauls, having no Druids,
and troubling not themselves about sacrifices: but
Tacitus, who is better evidence than Caesar, where
the Germans are concerned, assures us that they had
priests and bards. That "jurisdiction is vested in
the priests ; it is theirs to sit in judgment on all
offences. By them delinquents are put in irons, and
chastised with stripes ; the power of punishing is in
no other hands." He adds, "to impress on their
minds the idea of a tutelar deity, they carry with
them to the field of battle certain images and banners,
taken from their usual depositaries, the groves ; and
that one of these symbols was a ship — the emblem of
Isis." This, from what we now know of mythologies,
is a certain evidence of the eastern origin of their
religion : — the ship being the ark, or ship of the
world ; and Isis, the great mother of all things, the
earth. He assures us that they had also human
sacrifices.

The last European country we will now notice,
shall be Scandinavia. M. Mallet's most interesting
antiquities of those regions were written before our
eastern knowledge was so much enlarged, and before
Mr. Bryant had promulgated his theory of the origin
of paganism; and, therefore, when we come to open
his volumes, we are proportionably astonished and

26 PRIESTCRAFT

delighted to find all the curious particulars he has
collected of the Scandinavian gods and religious rites
so absolutely confirmatory of that theory. Here
again we have the same gods, under the different
names of Odin, Thor, Loke, with Frigga or Frea, the
goddess of the earth, the great mother. Here again
we have the same dominant caste of priests reigning
amid the same assemblage of horrors and pollution.

The priests, he says, of these inhuman gods were
called Drottes, a name equivalent to Druids. They
were frequently styled prophets, wise men, divine men.
At Upsal, each of the three superior deities had their
respective priests, the principal of whom to the num-
ber of twelve, presided over the sacrifices, and exer-
cised an unlimited authority over every thing which
seemed to have connexion with religion. The respect
shewn to them was suitable to their authority. Sprung,
for the most part, from the same family, like those of
the Jews, they persuaded the people that this family
had God himself for its founder. They often united
the priesthood and the sovereignty in their own per-
sons, after the example of Odin their progenitor.
The goddess Frigga was usually served by kings'
daughters, whom they called prophetesses and god-
desses. These pronounced oracles ; devoted them-
selves to perpetual virginity ; and kept up the sacred
fire in the temple. The power of inflicting pains and
penalties, of striking and binding a criminal, was
vested in the priests alone ; and men so haughty that
they thought themselves dishonoured if they did not
revenge the slightest offence, would tremblingly sub-
mit to blows, and even death itself, from the hand of
a pontiff, whom they took for the instrument of an
angry deity. In short, the credulity of the people,
and the craft and presumption of the priests went so
far, that these pretended interpreters of the divine

IN ALL AGES. 27

will, dared even to demand, in the name of heaven,
the blood of kings themselves, and obtained it ! To
succeed in this, it was requisite only for them to avail
themselves of those times of calamity, when the
people, distracted with fear and sorrow, laid their
minds open to the most horrid impressions. At these
times, while the prince was slaughtered at one of the
altars of the gods, the others were covered with the
offerings, which were heaped up on all sides for their
ministers.

But the general cause which regulated these sacri-
fices, was a superstitious opinion, which made the
northern natives regard the number three as sacred
and peculiarly dear to the gods. Thus every ninth
month they renewed this bloody ceremony, which was
to last nine days, and every day they offered up nine
victims, whether men or animals. But the most
solemn sacrifices were those which were offered at
Upsal in Sweden, every ninth year. Then the king,
the senate, and all the principal citizens were obliged
to appear in person, and to bring offerings, which
were placed in the great temple. Those who could
not come, sent their presents by others, or paid their
value in money to priests, whose business it was to
receive the offerings. Strangers nocked there in
crowds from all parts, and none were excluded except
those whose honour was stained, and especially such
as had been accused of cowardice. Then they chose
amongst the captives, in time of war, and amongst
the slaves in time of peace, nine persons to be sacri-
ficed. The choice was partly regulated by the
opinion of by-standers, and partly by lot. The
wretches upon whom it fell were then treated with
such honours by all the assembly ; they were so
overwhelmed with caresses for the present, and pro-
mises for the life to come, that they sometimes con-

28 PRIESTCRAFT

gratulated themselves on their destiny. But they
did not always sacrifice such mean persons. In great
calamities, in a pressing famine, for example, if the
people thought they had some pretext to impute the
cause of it to the king, they sacrificed him without
hesitation, as the highest price they could pay for
the divine favour. In this manner the first king of
Vermland was burnt in honour of Odin, to put away
a great dearth. The kings in their turn did not spare
the blood of their people ; and many of them even
that of their children. Hacon, king of Norway,
offered his son in sacrifice to obtain a victory over
his enemy, Harold. Aune, king of Sweden, devoted
to Odin the blood of his nine sons, to prevail on the
god to prolong his life. The ancient history of the
north abounds in similar examples.

These abominable sacrifices were accompanied with
various ceremonies. When the victim was chosen,
they conducted him towards the altar, where the
sacred fire was kept burning night and day. It was
surrounded by all sorts of iron and brazen vessels.
Among them one was distinguished by its superior
size ; in this they received the blood of their victim.
When they offered up animals, they speedily killed
them at the foot of the altar ; then they opened their
entrails and drew auguries from them, as among the
Romans : but when they sacrificed men, those they
pitched upon were laid upon a large stone, and
quickly strangled or knocked on the head. Some-
times they let out the blood, for no presage was more
respected than that which they drew from the greater
or less degree of impetuosity with which the blood
gushed out. The bodies were afterwards burnt, or
suspended in a sacred grove near the temple. Part
of the blood was sprinkled upon the people, on the
grove, on the idol, altar, benches and wall of the
temple, within and without.

IN ALL AGES. 29

Sometimes the sacrifices were varied. There was
a deep well in the neighbourhood of the temple ; the
chosen person was thrown headlong in, commonly in
honour of Goya, or the earth. If it went at once to
the bottom, it had proved agreeable to the goddess ;
if not, she refused it, and it was hung up in a sacred
forest. Near the temple of Upsal there was a grove
of this sort, every tree and every leaf of which was
regarded as the most sacred thing in the world. This,
which was named Odin's grove, was full of the bodies
of men and animals which had been sacrificed. The
temple at Upsal was as famous for its oracles as its
sacrifices. There were also celebrated ones at Dalia,
a province of Sweden, in Norway, and Denmark. It
should seem that the idols of the gods themselves
delivered the oracles viva voce. In an ancient Ice-
landic chronicle, we read of one Indred, who went
from home to wait for Thorstein, his enemy. Thor-
stein, upon his arrival, went into the temple. In it
was a stone, probably a statue, which he had been
accustomed to worship. He prostrated himself before
it, and prayed it to inform him of his destiny. Indred,
who stood without, heard the stone chant forth these
verses — " It is for the last time : it is with feet draw-
ing near to the grave, that thou art come to this place,
for it is most certain that before the sun riseth the
valiant Indred shall make thee feel his hatred."

The people persuaded themselves sometimes that
these idols answered by a gesture, or nod of the head.
Thus in the history of Olave Tryggeson, king of
Norway, we see a lord, named Hacon, who enters into
a temple, and prostrates himself before an idol which
held in its hand a great bracelet of gold. Hacon,
adds the historian, easily conceiving that so long as
the idol would not part with the bracelet, it was not
disposed to be reconciled to him, and having made

30 PRIESTCRAFT

some fruitless efforts to take the bracelet away, began
to pray afresh, and to offer it presents ; then getting
up a second time, the idol loosed the bracelet, and he
went away very well pleased.

But they had not only their bloody sacrifices, and
their oracles, but their orgies of licentiousness. These
occurred on the occasion of the feast of Frigga, the
goddess of love and pleasure ; and at Uulel, the feast
of Thor, in which the license was carried to such a
pitch as to become merely bacchanalian meetings,
where, amidst shouts, dancing, and indecent gestures,
so many unseemly actions were committed as to
disgust the wiser part of the community.

IN ALL AGES. 31

CHAPTER V.

ERN INDIANS, MEXICANS, AND PERUVIANS.

We have just seen that the same baleful superstitions
extended themselves from the east to the very extremi-
ties of Europe ; but we must now share in the aston-
ishment of the discoverers of America, to find them
equally reigning and rendering miserable the people
there. A new world was found, which had been hid-
den from the day of creation to the fifteenth Christian
age ; yet there, through that long lapse of time, it
was discovered, the same dominant spirit, and the
same terrible system of paganism had been existing.
The learned of Europe, on this great event, were
extremely puzzled for a time, to conceive how and
whence this distant continent had been peopled. The
proven proximity of Asia at Behrings Straits, solved
the mystery. But had not this become apparent, so
identical are the superstitions, the traditions and
practices of the Americans, with those of ancient
Asia, that we might have confidently pronounced
them to have come from that great seminary of the
human race.

The North- American Indians, who preserved both
most of their liberty, their simplicity of life and of
sentiment, worshipping only the Great Spirit, and
refusing to have any image of deity ; having in

32 PRIESTCRAFT

general no priests, yet retained many, and very clear,
traditions of the primeval world. So striking were
these facts, combined with the Asiatic aspects of the
Indians in their better days, before European oppres-
sions and European vices had wasted and degraded
them, that the early missionaries and visitants of
America, Adair, Branaird, Charlevoix, nay, William
Penn himself, were strongly persuaded that they had
found the lost ten tribes of Israel. When they saw
them carrying before them to battle an ark ; saw them
celebrating feasts of new moons, and heard them talk
of the times when the angels of God walked upon
earth with their ancestors ; talk of the two first
people ; of the two first brothers, one of whom slew
the other ; of the flood, and similar traditionary facts ;
it is not wonderful that they should have adopted
such a notion, — not perceiving, as we do now, that
these are familiar features of the Asiatic nations ; and
that though they did not prove them to be Hebrews,
they did to a certainty prove them to be Asiatics.

I must here passingly notice one inference, which
seems unaccountably to have escaped the minds of
antiquarians, connected with the peopling of this
continent. In the North- American wilds, exist strange
mounds and foundations of old fortifications, cairns,
or burying-places, in which earthern vessels and other
artificial remains are found, which prove that some
people occupied these forests long before the present
race of Indians ; a people who had more of the arts
of civilized life amongst them than these ever pos-
sessed. In certain caves of Kentucky, mummies have
even been found. Now connecting these facts with
the universal traditions of the Mexicans and South
Americans, that they came originally from a country
far to the north-west, does it not seem clear enough
that these remains were the traces of the earlier

IN ALL AGES. 33

Asiatics who entered America, and who, if the same
as the Mexicans and Peruvians, unquestionably
possessed more of civilization and its arts than the
northern tribes? — that other tribes more savage
and warlike followed them ; and that they them-
selves gradually sought fresh settlements, in ac-
cordance with their own traditions. This simple
theory seems to solve the problem which has so
long puzzled both the European and American anti-
quarians.

The Natchez, who had advanced far before other
tribes in their civil institutions, worshipped the sun,
and maintained, like the Persians, the perpetual fire,
his symbol, in their temples. They burnt, on the
funeral pile of their chiefs, human victims ; giving
them, according to M. Dumont, large piles of tobacco
to stupify them, as the Brahmins intoxicate their
victims to the same hideous custom. Ministers
were appointed to watch and maintain the sacred
fire : the first function of the great chief, every
morning, was an act of obeisance to the sun ; and
festivals, at stated periods, were held in his hon-
our. Amongst the people of Bogota, the sun and
moon were likewise the great objects of adoration.
Their system of religion was more regular and com-
plete, though less pure than that of the Natchez.
They had temples, altars, priests, sacrifices, and that
long train of ceremonies which superstition intro-
duces, wherever she has fully established her influ-
ence over the human mind. But the rites of their
worship were bloody and cruel : they offered human
victims to their deities, and nearly resembled the
Mexicans in the genius of their religion.

To the Mexicans and Peruvians we shall, indeed,
principally confine our observations. These nations
had grown to comparative greatness, and assumed a

D

34 PRIESTCRAFT

decided form of civil polity, and many of the rites of
what is called civilized life ; and in such nations the
combined power of kingcraft and priestcraft has been
always found to be proportionably strong. In those
conspicuous nations there were found all the great
features of that superstition which they had brought
with them from Asia, and which we have already
seen spread and tyrannized over every quarter of the
old world. They had their triads of gods ; their
worship of the sun ; their worship of the evil and
vindictive principle ; and worship of serpents. They
had the same dominant caste of priests and nobles ;
the same abject one of the common people ; human
sacrifices ; the burning of slaves and dependants on
the funeral pile ; they had the ark ; the doctrine of
successive worlds ; and the patriarchal traditions.

In the first place, their castes. — Robertson, on the
authority of Herrera, says, — " In tracing the great
lines of the Mexican constitution, an image of feudal
policy rises to our view, in its most rigid form ; and
we discern, in their distinguishing characters, a no-
bility possessing almost independent authority ; a
people depressed into the lowest state of dejection ;
and a king entrusted with the executive power of the
state. Its spirit and principles seem to have operated
in the new world in the same manner as in the an-
cient. The jurisdiction of the crown was extremely
limited ; all real and effective authority was retained
by the nobles. In order to secure full effect to these
constitutional restraints, the Mexican nobles did not
permit the crown to descend by inheritance, but dis-
posed of it by election. The great body of the
people was in a most humiliating state. A con-
siderable number, known by the name of Mayeques,
could not change their place of residence without
permission of the superior to whom they belonged.

IN ALL AGES. 35

They were conveyed, together with the lands on
which they were settled, from one proprietor to
another ; and were bound to cultivate the ground,
and perform several kinds of servile work. Others
were reduced to the lowest form of subjection, that of
domestic servitude, and felt the utmost rigour of that
wretched state. Their condition was held to be so
vile, and their lives deemed of so little value, that a
person who killed one of them was not subjected to
any punishment. Even those considered as freemen
were treated by their haughty lords as beings of an
inferior species. The nobles, possessed of ample
territories, were divided into various classes, to each
of which peculiar titles of honour belonged. The
people, not allowed to wear a dress of the same
fashion, or to dwell in houses of a form similar to
those of the nobles, accosted them with the most
submissive reverence. In the presence of their
sovereign they durst not lift their eyes from the
ground, or look him in the face. The nobles them-
selves, when admitted to an audience, entered bare-
footed, in mean garments, and, as slaves, paid him
homage approaching to adoration. The respect due
from inferiors to those above them in rank, was pre-
scribed with such ceremonious accuracy, that it in-
corporated with the language, and influenced its
genius and idiom. The style and appellations used
in the intercourse between equals, would have been
so unbecoming in the mouth of an inferior to one of
higher rank, that it would have been deemed an
insult."

What a lively picture of that system of domination
in the few, and slavery in the multitude, which we
have seen, or soon shall see, to have prevailed in all
regions ; in the feudal lands of Europe ; in India
and Egypt! and how perfect is the resemblance,

d 2

36 PRIESTCRAFT

when we find, as we shall, that at the head of all
these were the priests, who, says Faber, formed a
regular hierarchy, and dwelt together in cloisters
attached to their temples. So likewise in Peru, the
royal family, that which constituted the nobility,
were viewed as an entirely distinct race by the abject
plebeians : and they studiously preserved the purity
of their high blood, by intermarrying solely amongst
themselves. With these in the government of the
commonalty were associated the priesthood, who, as
in Mexico, were no straggling body, but a well-
organized fraternity.

With respect to their triads, the same author says,
the Peruvians supposed Viracocha to be the creator
of the gods : subordinate to him, they believed two
triads ; connecting, like the natives of the eastern
continent, the triple offspring of the great father with
the sun ; and, as in the case of Jupiter, with the
thunder. The first consisted of Chuquilla, Catuilla,
and Intyllapa ; or the father-thunder, the son-thun-
der, and the brother-thunder ; the second of Apomti,
Churunti, and Inti-quaoqui ; as the father-sun, the
son-sun, and the brother-sun. Nor were they satis-
fied with these two principal triads. So strongly
were they impressed with the notion of three deities
inferior to that primeval god who sprung from the
sea, that they had likewise three images of Chuquilla,
himself a person of the first triad ; as the Persian
Mythras was not only one with Oromasdes and
Ahriman, but was also said to have triplicated him-
self. They had also an idol Tangatanga, which they
said was one-in-three and three-in-one. Added to
these, they venerated, like the pagans of the eastern
hemisphere, a great universal mother; and what
shews further the genuine character of this great
demiurgic man of the sea, Noah, the superior of their

IN ALL AGES. 37

multiplied triad, the badge of the Inca, was a rain-
bow and two snakes ; the one allusive to the deluge,
the other the symbols of the two great parents of
both gods and men. Purchas, in his Pilgrimage,
quaintly calls this triad, an apish imitation of the
Trinity brought in by the devil. Their worship was
sufficiently diabolical, being debased with all the
abominable impurities of the Arkite superstitions.

Remarks not dissimilar might be made on the
deity of the Mexicans, believed to be the creator of
the world. They call him Mexitli, or Vitzliputzli.
His image was seated on an azure-coloured stool,
placed in a litter ; his complexion was also azure ;
and in his hand he held an azure staff, fashioned in
the shape of a waving serpent. Their next deity
they named Tlaloc ; their third Tezcallipuca. Him
they esteemed the god of repentance. As for the
superior divinity of this triad, he was placed on a
high altar, in a small box, decked with feathers and
ornaments of gold ; and the tradition of the Mexicans
was, that when they journeyed by different stations,
from a remote country to the north-west, they bore
this oracular image along with them, seated in a
coffer made of reeds. Whenever they rested, they
placed the ark of their deity on an altar; and at
length, by his special direction, they built their prin-
cipal city in the midst of a lake.

They went forwards, says Purchas, " bearing their
idol with them in an ark of reeds, supported by four
of their principal priests, with whom he talked, and
communicated his oracles and directions. He like-
wise gave them laws, and taught them the sacrifices
and ceremonies they still observe. And even as the
pillar of cloud and of fire conducted the Israelites in
their passage through the wilderness, so this apish
devil gave them notice when to advance and when to
stay."

38 PRIESTCRAFT

Every particular of this superstition shews its dilu-
vian origin; and proves the supposed demiurge to
be no other than the great father. The ark of Mexitli
is the same machine as that in which the Hammon,
or Osiris of Egypt was borne in his procession ; the
same as the ark of Bacchus ; the ship of Isis, and the
Argha of Iswara. His dark complexion is that of
the Vishnu of the Indian, and Cneph of the Egyptian
triads. He was oracular, like the ship Argo of the
Greeks ; the Baris of Hammon ; the chief arkite
gods of all Gentile nations. He connects his city
with a lake, like the ancient Cabiri, like that of
Buto on the lake Chemmis in Egypt; and has evi-
dent connexion with the lake and floating islands of
all the pagan mythologies.

It is a curious circumstance, that we find the doc-
trine of the succession of worlds, and of the death
and revival of the hero-gods, also amongst the Mexi-
cans. They doubtless brought it out of eastern Asia,
with a mythology which is substantially the same as
that of the larger continent, agreeably to their stand-
ing tradition respecting the route of their ancestors.
They supposed the world to have been made by the
gods, but imagined that since the creation, four suns
have successively appeared and disappeared. The
first sun perished by a deluge ; the second fell from
heaven when there were many giants in the country :
the third was consumed by fire; the fourth was
dissipated by a tempest of wind. Three days after
the last sun became visible, all the former gods died :
then, in process of time, were produced those whom
they have since worshipped. This resemblance to
the tradition of the Hindoos, is striking enough, as
well as to that of the Egyptians, who told Herodotus
that the same sun had four times deviated from his

IN ALL AGES. 39

course, having twice risen in the west, and twice set
in the east.

When the Mexicans brought their arkite god out
of Asia, they also brought with him the ancient
mysteries of that deity. Like the idolaters whom
they had left behind, they sacrificed on the tops of
mountains in traditional commemoration of the sacri-
fice on Ararat ; and adored their bloody gods in dark
caverns, similar to those of the worship of Mythras.
Their orgies, like all the other orgies of the Gentiles,
appear to have been of a peculiarly gloomy and
terrific nature ; sufficient to strike with terror, even
the most undaunted hearts. Hence their priests, in
order that they might be enabled to go through the
dreadful rites without shuddering, anointed them-
selves with a peculiar ointment, and used various
fantastic ceremonies to banish fear. Thus prepared,
they boldly sallied forth to celebrate their nocturnal
rites in wild mountains and the deep recesses of
obscure caves, much in the same manner as the
nightly orgies of Bacchus, Ceres, and Ceridwen were
celebrated by their respective nations. A similar
process enabled them to offer up those hecatombs of
human victims, by which their blood-stained super-
stition was more eminently distinguished than even
those of Moloch, Cali, Cronus, or Jaggernath. They
had also their vestal virgins ; and both those women
and the priests were wont frantically to cut them-
selves with knives, while engaged in the worship of
their idols, like the votaries of Baal and Bellona.

Of their bloody sacrifices, the Spanish writers are
full ; particularly Herrera, Acosta, and Bernal Diaz.
Fear, says those authors, was the soul of the Mexican
worship. They never approached their altars without
sprinkling them with blood, drawn from their own

40 PRIESTCRAFT

bodies. But of all offerings, human sacrifices were
deemed the most acceptable. This belief, mingling
with the spirit of vengeance, added more force to it ;
every captive taken in war was brought to the temple,
and sacrificed with horrid cruelties. The head and
the heart were devoted to the gods : the body was
carried off by the warrior who took the captive, to
feast himself and his friends. Hence, the spirit of
the Mexicans became proportionally unfeeling ; and
the genius of their religion so far counteracted the
influence of policy and arts, that, notwithstanding
their progress in both, their manners, instead of
softening, became more fierce. Those nations in the
New World, who had made the greatest progress in
the arts of social life, were, in several respects, the
most ferocious ; and the barbarity of their actions,
exceeded even those of the savage state.

The Spanish writers have been charged with ex-
aggerating the number of human victims annually
sacrificed by the Mexicans. Gomara says, there was
no year in which twenty thousand were not immo-
lated. The skulls of those unhappy persons were
ranged in order, in a building erected for that pur-
pose ; and two of Cortes's officers who had counted
them, told Gomara they amounted to a hundred and
thirty six thousand. Herrera declares that five and
twenty thousand have been sacrificed in one day.
The first bishop of Mexico, in a letter to the chapter-
general of his order, states the annual average at
twenty thousand. On the other hand, Bernal Diaz
asserts that the Franciscan monks, who were sent
into New Spain, immediately after the conquest,
found, on particular inquiry, that they did not exceed
annually two thousand five hundred. Probably the
numbers varied with the varying circumstances of war
and other occurrences ; but from all authorities, it

IN ALL AGES. 41

appears that their bloody rites were carried to an
enormous extent.

But enough of these terrible and revolting trophies
of priestcraft. "We might follow the course of this
pestilence into Africa and the South Sea Isles ; but I
shall rather choose to refer all those who may be
curious on the subject, to the narratives of our tra-
vellers and missionaries, in which they will see the
same causes operating the same effects. I prefer to
give a concluding page or two in this chapter, to the
vivid picture of priestcraft which Mr. Southey has
drawn in his noble poem of Madoc. No man has
felt and described the true spirit of this terrible race
of men more forcibly than Mr. Southey. His Madoc
was a Welch prince, who, according to Cambrian
tradition, first discovered America, and there settled
with a colony of his countrymen. On this founda-
tion Mr. Southey has formed one of his most delight-
ful poems ; full of nature, of the working of strong
affections, and of the spirit of the subject.

Madoc discovers land, and falls in with a native
who had fled from his country to avoid being sacri-
ficed by the priests. This youth, Lincoya, leads
Madoc to his native land, where he is soon introduced
to Erillyab, the widowed queen, who sits before her
door, near the war-pole of her deceased husband ; —
a truly noble woman. Madoc, in his own narrative,
says-
She welcomed us
With a proud sorrow in her mien ; fresh fruits
Were spread before us, and her gestures said
That when he lived whose hand was wont to wield
Those weapons, — that in better days, — that ere
She let the tresses of her widowhood
Grow wild, she could have given to guests like us
A worthier welcome. Soon a man approached,
Hooded with sable ; his half-naked limbs
Smeared black : the people at his sight drewjround ;

42 PRIESTCRAFT

The women wailed and wept'; the children turned

And hid their faces in their mothers' knees.

He to the queen addressed his speech, then looked

Around the children, and laid hands on two

Of different sexes, but of age alike,

Some six years old, who at his touch shrieked out.

But then Lincoya rose, and to my feet

Led them, and told me that the conqueror claimed

These innocents for tribute ; that the priest

Would lay them on the altar of his god, —

Tear out their little hearts in sacrifice,

Yea, with more cursed wickedness himself,

Feast on their flesh.

Madoc defends the children ; sends away the dis-
appointed priest ; and, in consequence, gets into war
with the Azticas, the powerful tribe which has seized
upon Aztlan, the city of the Hoamen, the people of
queen Erillyab. He soon, however, obliges them
to come to terms ; to renounce their bloody rites,
and, having put things into a fair train, returns to
Europe for fresh stores and emigrants. In his
absence, the priests of Aztlan, according to the wont
of all priests, stir up the king of Aztlan again to
war. They cry, if not exactly " Great is Diana of
the Ephesians," great is Mexitli of the Azticas.
They pretend to hear voices and see prodigies ; they
pretend the gods cry out for the blood of their enemies,
and forebode all manner of destruction from them,
if they be not appeased. Madoc does but just arrive
in time to save his colony. A desperate war is com-
menced ; an occasion is given for the full display of
the reckless atrocity, the perfidy, and vile arts of the
priests, and for many noble and touching incidents
arising out of the contact of better natures with the
casualties of battle and stratagem. Hoel, a child,
the nephew of Madoc, is carried off, at the instigation
of the priests, to be sacrificed. Madoc in following
his captives, falls himself into an ambush, and is

IN ALL AGES. 43

doomed a victim to Mexitli; but escapes through a
national custom of allowing a great warrior to fight
for his life at the altar-stone, by the timely arrival
of his friends, and by the assistance of a native
maiden, to whom also Hoel owes his rescue from the
den of Tlaloc, where he was left to starve. The
Azticas are defeated, and finally abandon their terri-
tory, going onward and founding Mexico : calling it
after the name of their chief deity.

To quote all the passages which seem especially
made for our purpose, would fill this volume ; but I
must select one or two. The description of the idol :
On a huge throne, with four huge silver snakes
As if the keeper of the sanctuary
Circled, with stretching neck and fangs displayed,
Mexitli sate ; another graven snake
Belted with scales of gold his monstrous bulk.
Around his neck a loathsome collar hung
Of human hearts ; the face was masked with gold ;
His specular eyes seemed fire ; one hand upreared
A club, the other, as in battle, held
The shield ; and over all suspended hung
The banner of the nation.
The chief priest, Tezozomoc, when about to pre-
sent little Hoel to the idol, and the child, terrified
at his hideous appearance, shrieks and recoils from
him : —

His dark aspect,
Which nature with her harshest characters
Had featured, art made worse. His cowl was white ;
His untrimmed hair, a long and loathsome mass,
With cotton cords entwisted, clung with gum,
And matted with the blood which every morn
He from his temples drew before the god,
In sacrifice ; bare were his arms, and smeared
Black ; but his countenance a stronger dread
Than all the horrors of that outward garb
Struck, with quick instinct, to young Hoel's heart.
It was a face whose settled sullenness
No gentle feeling ever had disturbed :
Which when he probed a victim's living breast,
Retained its hard composure.

44 PRIESTCRAFT

The whole work is alive with the machinations,
arts, and fanatic deeds of the priesthood. The king
of the Azticas, in an early conference with Madoc,
says, speaking of the priests, —

Awe them, for they awe me :

and his queen, after he has been killed in battle, and
she is about to perish on his funeral pile, calls out to
his brother and successor, —

Take heed, O king !
Beware these wicked men ! They to the war
Forced my dead lord. . . Thou knowest, and I know,
, He loved the strangers ; that his noble mind,
Enlightened by their lore, had willingly
Put down these cursed altars ! As she spake
They dragged her to the stone . . . Nay : nay ! she cried,
There needs not force ! I go to join my lord !
His blood and mine be on you ! Ere she ceased,
The knife was in her breast. Tezozomoc,
Trembling with wrath, held up toward the sun
The reeking heart.

When the war is terminated, Madoc declares,

No priest must dwell among us, — that hath been
The cause of all this misery !

And that, indeed, has been the cause of at least
half the miseries in the world, as I shall hereafter
shew. With this sentiment let us close this chapter.

IN ALL AGES. 45

CHAPTER VI.

EGYPT.

We have now traversed an immense space of country,
and of time ; and found one great uniform spirit of
priestcraft, one uniform system of paganism, presiding
over and oppressing the semi-barbarous nations of
the earth ; it remains for us to inquire whether the
three great nations of antiquity, Greece, Egypt, and
India, so early celebrated for their science, philoso-
phy, and political importance, were affected by the
same mighty and singular influence; and here we
shall find it triumphing in its clearest form, and ex-
isting in its highest perfection.

The priest-ridden condition of Egypt is notorious
to all readers of history. Lord Shaftesbury calls it,
"the motherland of superstitions." So completely
had the lordly and cunning priesthood here contrived
to fix themselves on the shoulders of the people, so
completely to debase and stupify them with an over-
whelming abundance of foolish veneration, that the
country swarmed with temples, gods, and creatures,
which, in themselves most noxious, or loathsome,
were objects of adoration. Juvenal laughs at them,
as making gods of their onions ; growing gods in
their garden-beds by thousands —

O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascunter in hortis
Numina !

and dogs, cats, lizards, and other creatures were

46 PRIESTCRAFT

cherished with extraordinary veneration. Diodorus
Siculus says, that a Roman soldier having hy accident
killed a cat, the common people instantly surrounded
his house with every demonstration of fury. The
king's guards were immediately dispatched to save
him from their rage, but in vain ; his authority and
the Roman name were equally unavailing.

The accounts we possess, of the extreme populous-
ness of ancient Egypt ; of the number and splendour
of their temples ; of the knowledge and authority of
their priests ; and the mighty remains of some of
their sacred buildings, sufficiently testify to the
splendour and absolute dominance of this order in
this great kingdom.

To shew that the priestcraft of this ancient realm
was part of the same system that we have been
tracing, a part of that still existing in India, will
require but little labour. We shall see that the
Greek philosophers themselves assert the derivation
of their mythology from Egypt ; and so strikingly
similar are those of India and Egypt, that it has
been a matter of debate amongst learned men, which
nation borrowed its religion from the other. The
fact appears to be, that neither borrowed from the
other, but that both drew from one common source, a
source we have already pointed out — that of the
Cuthic tribes. Egypt was peopled by the children
of Ham : and by whomsoever India was peopled, the
great priestly and military caste early found its way
there, and introduced the very same superstitions,
founded on the worship of Noah and his sons ; and
shadowed out with emblems and ceremonies derived
from the memory of the flood. Both nations are of
the highest antiquity ; both arrived at extraordinary
knowledge of astronomy, of architecture, of many of
the mechanic arts, of government, and of a certain

IN ALL AGES. 47

moral and theologic philosophy, which the priests
retained to themselves, and made use of as a mighty
engine to enslave the people. Their knowledge was
carefully shrowded from the multitude ; the populace
were crammed with all sorts of fabulous puerilities ;
and were made to feel the display of science in the
hands of the priesthood, as evidence of supernatural
powers.

Dr. Robertson, in his Disquisition on Ancient
India, and in his History of America, has endeavoured
to explain the uniformity of pagan belief, by sup-
posing that rude nations would everywhere be in-
fluenced by the same great powers and appearances
of nature ; — by the beneficial influence of the sun
and moon; of the fruitful earth ; by the contemplation
of the awfulness of the ocean, of tempests, and thun-
der ; and would come to adore those great objects as
gods. But this will, by no means, account for the
striking identity of the great principles and practices
of paganism, as we have seen them existing. Differ-
ent nations, especially under the different aspects of
widely divided climates, would have imagined widely
different deities ; and the ceremonies in which they
would have adored them, would have been as infinite
as the vagaries of the human fancy. But would they
have all produced gods so positively of the same
family, that, whoever went from one nation to another,
however distant, amongst people of totally different
habits and genius, would have immediately recognized
their own gods, and have given them their own
names? Would Caesar and Tacitus have beheld
Roman gods in Germany and Gaul ? Herodotus,
Pllfto, and Pythagoras, have found those of Greece
in Egypt ? Would these gods be, in every country,
attended by the same traditionary theory of origin, —
the three sons of one great father, multiplying them-

48 PRIESTCRAFT

selves into the eight persons of the original gods —
the precise number of those enclosed in the ark?
Would traditions of the flood in all countries, most
full and remarkable, and, in the oldest Hindoo
writings, almost word for word with the one in the
Bible, have existed, as may be seen in the histories of
the various countries ; and as may be found carefully
collected by Faber and Bryant in their works on the
pagan mythologies 1 This could not be; — nor would
so many nations, in different parts of the world,
retain the ark ; nor celebrate mysteries, substantially
the same, in the same terrific manner in caves ; nor
would they have all hit on the horrid sacrifice of men ;
nor the same doctrine of transmigration; nor have
permitted an imperious caste of priests and nobles to
rule over them with absolute domination. To sup-
pose all this to happen, except from one great and
universal cause, is as rational as to suppose the
system of earth and heaven to be the work of chance :
and the farther we go, the more clearly shall we see
this demonstrated.

The Egyptians, like all other nations, had their
triad of gods ; — Horus, Osiris, and Typhon. This
was the popular one ; but the priests had another
of a more intellectual nature, Emeph, Eicton, and
Phtha. They had also their great mother Isis,
Ceres, or the earth : but they had besides many in-
ferior deities, which we need not enumerate. Every
god had his shrine ; every shrine its train of priests ;
besides which there were the shrines of the oracles,
so that there was plenty of influence and profit for
the priesthood. They bore the ark of Osiris once a
year in procession ; setting it afloat on the Nile at a
certain place, and lamenting it for a time as lost. It
was taken up at another place, with great rejoicings
that the god was found again. It was said to b

1

. to oe

IN ALL AGES. 49

pursued by the great evil serpent Typhon in the
ocean ; but, in time was triumphant over him — a
direct allusion to the going of Noah into the ark,
and being driven by the great power of waters for a
time ; when he returned to land, and peopled the
world anew.

Their doctrine of transmigration, Herodotus tells
us, some of his countrymen, whom he could name but
does not choose (meaning, however, Pythagoras and
others), carried thence into Greece. The Egyptians,
says the venerable Greek, believe that, on the disso-
lution of the body, the soul immediately enters into
some other animal ; and that, after using as vehicles
every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged crea-
tures, it finally enters a second time into a human
body. They affirm that it undergoes all these
changes in the space of three thousand years.

This is precisely the doctrine of the Hindoos, and
of those nations we have already noticed ; and hence
proceeded that excessive veneration of the people for
every species of animal ; fearing to hurt or destroy
them, lest they should dislodge the soul of a relative
or friend. We have noticed their fury about a cat :
their veneration for dogs was equally extreme till
after the celebrated expedition of Cambyses, the
Persian, who, with the zeal of his country against all
images of deity, threw down their idols, and slew their
sacred animals, which the dogs devoured, and thereby
became objects of abhorrence to the Egyptians.

Their laws, says Herodotus, compel them to che-
rish animals. A certain number of men and women
are appointed to this office, which is esteemed so
honourable that it descends in succession from father
to son. In the presence of these animals the
inhabitants of the cities perform their vows. They
address themselves as supplicants to the divinity

50 PRIESTCRAFT

which is supposed to be represented by the animal
in whose presence they are. They then cut off their
childrens' hair ; sometimes the whole ; sometimes
the half; at others a third. This they weigh in a
balance against a piece of silver. As soon as the
silver preponderates, they give it to the woman
who keeps the beast. It is a capital offence to kill
one of these animals. To destroy one accidentally
is punishable by a fine paid to the priests ; but he
who kills an ibis or a hawk, however involunta-
rily, cannot by any means escape death. When-
ever a cat dies there is universal mourning in a
family ; and every member of it cuts off his eye-
brows : but when a dog dies, they shave their heads
and every part of their bodies. This, after the days
of Cambyses, would, of course, be somewhat altered.
The cats, when dead, are carried to sacred buildings,
salted, and afterwards buried in the city of Bubastes.
Female dogs are buried in sacred chests, wherever
they happen to die, as are ichneumons ; shrew-mice
and hawks are buried at Butos ; bears and wolves
where they die. Otters and eels also excited great
veneration. The crocodile was held to be divine by
one part of the kingdom ; by another it was exe-
crated. Where it was reverenced, it had temples, a
large train of attendants, and, after death, was em-
balmed. Maximus Tyrius says, a woman reared a
young crocodile, and the Egyptians esteemed her
highly fortunate as the nurse of a deity. The woman
had a child which used to play with the crocodile,
till the animal one day turned fierce, and ate it up ;
the woman exulted, and counted the child's fate
blessed in the extreme, to have been the victim of
her domestic god. Such is the melancholy stupidity
into which priestcraft can plunge the human mind !
I shall not pursue the superstitions of this people

IN ALL AGES. 51

farther, but refer my readers to Herodotus, Plu-
tarch, Diodorus, and Porphyrius, for all further par-
ticulars ; except to state that the Egyptians, were we
to credit Herodotus, were singular in one respect —
having no human sacrifices, save, perhaps, in the
very earliest ages. This, however, is so remarkable
an exception to the universality of the system, that
we find it difficult of belief; and, on turning to
Strabo, we are assured that they annually sacrificed
to the Nile a noble virgin ; a statement confirmed by
the Arabian writer, Murtadi, who relates that they
arrayed her in rich robes, and hurled her into the
stream. Diodorus affirms, that they sacrificed red-
haired men at the tomb of Osiris, because his mortal
enemy, Typhon, was of that colour. Busiris sacri-
ficed Thracians to appease the angry Nile ; and three
men were daily sacrificed to Lucina at Heliopolis ;
instead of which Amasis afterwards humanely sub-
stituted waxen images.

They not only practised these horrors, but the
Phallic rites in all their loathsomeness ; and en-
grafted a vulgar and indecent character on the na-
tional manners. They propagated the abominations
of Priapis, and the Bacchanalian and Saturnalian
orgies amongst the Greeks. The priests had so fast
bound the people in the strongest bonds — knowledge
in their own order, and ignorance in the multitude ; in
puerile forms and ceremonies, and the serpent-folds of
sensuality; that they had established themselves in
the most absolute manner on their shoulders. Rome
and India can alone present similar examples.

As we have seen in all other countries, so here
they were the lordly caste. The nation, say the
authorities I have above quoted, is divided into three
castes — priests, nobles, and people; the latter of
whom are confined to mechanic or rural employ-

e 2

52 PRIESTCRAFT

ments, utterly excluded from knowledge, advance-
ment, and power. As in India to this day, the son
must succeed his father in his trade. " I know
not," says Herodotus, " whether the Greeks have
borrowed this custom from them, but I have seen the
same thing in various parts of Thrace, Scythia, Per-
sia, and Lydia. It seems, indeed, to be an estab-
lished prejudice amongst nations, even the least
refined, to consider mechanics and their descendants
as the lowest sort of citizens, and to esteem those
most noble who are of no profession. The soldiers
and the priests are the only ranks in Egypt which
are honourably distinguished ; these, each of them,
receive from the public a portion of land of twelve
acres, free from all taxes : besides this, the military
enjoy, in their turn, other advantages ; one thousand
are every year, in turn, on the king's guard, and
receive, besides their land, a daily allowance of five
pounds of bread, two of beef, and four austeres of
wine."

Plato, Plutarch, and Diodorus agree with him in
this particular. A prince, say they, cannot reign in
Egypt if he be ignorant of sacred affairs. The king
must be either of the race of priests or soldiers ; these
two classes being distinguished, the one by their
wisdom, the other by their valour. When they have
chosen a warrior for king, he is immediately admitted
into the order of priests, who instruct him in their
mysterious philosophy. The priests may censure
the king ; give him advice ; and regulate his actions.
By them is fixed the time when he shall walk, bathe,
or even visit his wife. The sacred ministers possess,
in return, many and great advantages. They are not
obliged to consume any part of their domestic pro-
perty ; each has a moiety of sacred viands, ready
dressed, assigned him, besides a large daily allowance
of beef, and geese, and wine.

IN ALL AGES. 53

What a striking illustration is this of what we find
in Genesis, cap. xlvii. v. 22, of the doings of Joseph,
who adopted a policy towards the Egyptians more
despotic than one would have expected from his
patriarchal character ; or from a simple Canaanitish
shepherd — first of gathering up the corn from all the
land of Egypt, and then selling it out, in the horrors
of famine, to the people for their possessions, whereby
the whole kingdom became the purchased property of
Pharaoh, except that of the priests — " only the land
of the priests bought he not, for the priests had a
portion assigned them of Pharaoh."

The priests, indeed, were too powerful for Joseph,
or even for Pharaoh himself. Darius wished only to
place a statue of himself in a temple ; the priests
violently resisted it, and Darius was obliged to sub-
mit. Herodotus tells us that the priests shewed him
the images of their predecessors for three hundred
and forty-one descents : and M. Larcher even sup-
poses that these priests were, for many ages, the sole
princes of this strange country ; a most triumphant
reign of priestcraft indeed! Let us now turn to
Greece.

54 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER VII.

GREECE.

The popular theology of this noble and celebrated
nation, as it existed during its most enlightened ages,
has been made familiar to every mind by its literature
being taught in all schools, and furnishing perpetual
allusions and embellishments to all writers. Herodotus
says that Hesiod and Homer invented the theogony
of Greece ; that is, they, no doubt, methodized the
confused traditions of their ancestors, and organized
them into that very beautiful system, which we still
admire, when it has become the most fabulous of
fables, more than the kindred creations of all other
people. Though it had the same origin as all other
mythologies, yet, passing through the glorious minds
of these poets, it assumed all those characters of
grace and beauty which they conferred on their litera-
ture, their philosophy, and on all the arts and embel-
lishments of life. Familiar as Homer has made us
all with that hierarchy of gods which figure so con-
spicuously in his writings, we are continually fur-
nished by him with glimpses of a more ancient dy-
nasty, and with theories of their origin, which clash
with his more general one, and at first puzzle and
confound us. When we come, however, to trace up
these casual revealings, we soon find ourselves in a
new world. These gods, which he at first taught us
were all the offspring of Saturn, and of his three sons

IN ALL AGES. 55

Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, we discover, to our
astonishment, are the gods of all other nations, —
gods assuming all the character of the highest anti-
quity, and deriving their being in a manner totally at
variance with the more modern system. His Her-
cules, Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres, Venus, &c, instead of
being the comparatively recent children of Jove, are
found to blend and become synonimous with him or
the great Mother. Surprised at this strange disco-
very, we pursue the inquiry, and are led into those
very regions where we have lately been — into central
Asia, and to the period of the Flood. The tombs of
the gods were existing in Greece ; they were, there-
fore, but deified men, — and whence came these men ?
From the Flood. Traditions of floods were the most
familiar of things in Greece ; and they agreed, both
that of Deucalion and others, with all the particulars
of the real one. Herodotus tells us that the Egyp-
tians, into whose religion he was initiated, invented
the names of the twelve great gods ; but we have al-
ready seen whence the Egyptians drew their deities.
Plutarch contends that they came from Phoenicia.
And who were the gods of the Phoenicians ? Ilus, or
Ark-Ilus, or Hercules, i.e. Noah ; and Dagon ; the
old man, On, or Oannes, who, according to Sanco-
niatho, came out of the sea, and taught them to
plant corn and the vine. Others say, that the gods
came into Greece from Samothrace, with the Pelasgi,
an ancient wandering people, who bore in an ark with
them the Cabiri, or mighty ones. These Cabiri have
been the subject of much contention ; but all writers
admit that they were three, or eight, that is, the three
sons of Noah, or the eight people of the ark. It is
most likely that from all these sources portions of the
same great system of corrupted worship were derived.
So conspicuous is the real origin of all the Grecian

56 PRIESTCRAFT

traditions, that I shall not dwell upon it. It is enough
to state that they celebrated the same mysteries, prac-
tised the same human sacrifices, were contaminated
with the same Phallic abominations, as all the other
nations of paganism ; in fact, all the characters of the
great Noachic superstitions were engrafted upon them.
The bold and free genius of the nation ; that splendid
and extraordinary emanation of intellect, which not
only made it the wonder of the ancient world, but
has constituted it the well-spring of knowledge to
all ages, and almost the creator of the universal mo-
dern mind, saved it from the utmost horrors and
degradations of priestcraft. The national spirit ope-
rating in the soul of Homer, again through him
operated with tenfold force on the minds of his coun-
trymen. In all other countries the priests were the
monopolists of knowledge. " Immured," says Mau-
rice, in his Indian Antiquities, " in the errors of
Polytheism, as was the great body of the Egyptian
nation, it has been incontestibly proved by the im-
mortal Cudworth, that the hierophant, or arch-priest,
in the secret rites of their religion, taught the doctrine
of the unity of the Godhead ; but this noble senti-
ment, though they had the magnanimity to conceive,
they wanted the generosity to impart to the deluded
populace ; for it was thought dangerous both to the
church and state, to shake the foundations of the
reigning superstitions." This, if I have not already
shewn, it would be easy to shew, was the practice
the world over ; but this knowledge falling on the
mind of Homer, he disdained to make it an instru-
ment of slavery, but poured it abroad like light
through the earth ; and his countrymen, listening to
his glorious poems with enthusiasm, became imbued
with the same dauntless, untameable spirit, alike in-
tolerant of the despotism of the throne or the altar.

IN ALL AGES. 57

Many of his more timid compatriots, indeed, were
terrified at the freedom of his treatment of the gods.
Everywhere we perceive that he regarded them but as
convenient poetical machinery. Ever and anon we find
him rising into such sublime notions of Deity and the
Divine government, that we feel that he possessed
that true knowledge of the Creator which Socrates
and Plato, and Cicero, in Rome, afterwards displayed.
So strikingly, indeed, does he evince this, that many
have thought that in his wanderings he had come in
contact with the Hebrew doctrines. I doubt this. I
believe, rather, it came to him from the earliest ages,
by other sources ; but, be it as it may, his description
of the gods exerting their power is almost worthy of
Isaiah.

Mars shouts to Simois from his beauteous hill :
The mountain shook, the rapid stream stood still.
Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls,
And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles.
Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground ;
The forests wave, the mountains nod around :
Through all their summits tremble Ida's woods,
And from their sources boil her hundred floods.
Troy's turrets totter on the rocking plain,
And the tossed navies beat the heaving main.

Pope's Translation, B. xx.

The sentiments that abound in the Odyssey are
worthy, not merely of a Hebrew, but of a Christian ; —
as this fine and just opinion of slavery : —

Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. — B. xviii.

This noble description of the power of conscience : —

Pirates and conquerors of hardened mind,
The foes of peace, and scourges of mankind,
To whom offending men are made a prey,
When Jove in vengeance gives a land away :

58 PRIESTCRAFT

Even these, — when of their ill-got spoils possessed,
Find sure tormentors in the guilty breast ;
Some voice of God, close whispering within—
" Wretch ! this is villany ; and this is sin!"

And those many declarations of God's guardian-
ship of the poor and the stranger : —

'T is Jove unfolds our hospitable door ;

'T is Jove that sends the stranger and the poor. — B. xiv.

Let first the herald due libations pay

To Jove, who guides the wanderer on his way. — B. vii.

By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent,
And what to them we give, to Jove is lent.

Low at thy knee, thy succour we implore ;

Respect us human, and relieve us poor ;

At least some hospitable gifts bestow,

'T is what the happy, to the unhappy owe.

'T is what the gods require : — those gods revere, —

The poor and stranger are their constant care.

To Jove their cause, and their revenge belongs —

He wanders with them, and he feels their wrongs.— B. ix.

From Homer's mind, truth glanced abroad with a
divine and dreadless honesty; unlike that of poor
Herodotus, who at the utterance of a bolder senti-
ment, hopes he has not given offence to gods or men.

We see in his writings not only continual indica-
tions of great moral truths, but the same integrity
evinced in sketching the manners of the early ages of
his country. We see his favourite hero dragging his
noble foe at his chariot, and immolating men at the
funeral of his friend. What Greece would have been
in the hands of priests, but for its own elastic spirit,
and for the mighty influence of its poets and sages,
we have seen pictured in other nations ; what it was,
we have now to see. Priestcraft here did not rule
with the same unmasked mien, and unrestrained
hand, as in other countries ; — it adapted its policy to

IN ALL AGES. 59

the spirit of the people. It gratified their curiosity-
after philosophic knowledge, and after the future, by-
mysteries and oracles ; their love of grace and festivity,
by beautiful processions and joyous festivals ; it
captivated and awed their sensitive imaginations, by
calling to its aid the fine arts, as the papal church did
afterwards by its adherents, — erecting the most mag-
nificent temples, and setting before their eyes those
miracles of paintings now lost, except in the eulo-
giums of antiquity ; and of sculpture, some of which
remain to command the admiration, if not the worship
of the world. By these means they attained their
end, — immense wealth and influence, — an influence,
the strength of which, on the common mind, may be
estimated by facts about to be given, but perhaps
more by the circumstance of Socrates, the most
sagacious of their philosophers, at the hour of his
death, and when he was delivering the most sublime
sentiments, enjoining his friends to sacrifice on his
behalf, a cock to JEsculapius.

Let us now briefly run over the great features of
priestcraft in Greece ; and first, of human sacrifices.
Archbishop Potter, in his Antiquities of Greece,
chap, iv., says, " Neither was it lawful to sacrifice
oxen only, but also men. Examples of this sort of
inhumanity were very common in most of the bar-
barous nations. Among the primitive Grecians it
was accounted an act of so uncommon cruelty and im-
piety, that Lycaon, king of Arcadia, was feigned by
the poets to have been turned into a wolf, because he
offered a human sacrifice to Jupiter. In latter days
it was undoubtedly more common and familiar.
Aristomenes, the Messinian, sacrificed three hundred
men ; among whom was Theopompus, one of the
kings of Sparta, to Jupiter of Ithome. Themistocles,
in order to procure the assistance of the gods against

60

PRIESTCRAFT

the .Persians, sacrificed some captives of that nation,
as we find in Plutarch. Bacchus had an altar in
Arcadia, upon which young damsels were beaten to
death with bundles of rods ; something like to which
was practised by the Lacedemonians, who scourged
the children, sometimes to death, in honour of Diana
Orthia. To the Manes and infernal gods, such
sacrifices were very often offered. Hence we read of
Polyxena's being sacrificed to Achilles ; and Homer
relates how that hero butchered twelve Trojan cap-
tives at the funeral of Patroclus. iEneas, whom
Virgil celebrates for his piety, is an example of the
same practice : —

Sulmone creatos
Quatuor hie juvenes, totidem, quos educat Ufens,
Viventes rapit ; inferias quos immolet umbris,
Captivoque rogi perfundat sanguine flammas. — Lib. x.

" Whoever desires to see more instances of human
sacrifices, may consult Clemens of Alexandria, Euse-
bius, and other Christian apologists."

To this, we may add the well-known sacrifice of
Iphygenia, by the assembled Grecian powers on their
way to Troy ; the sacrifice of two children by Mene-
laus, related by Herodotus, and what Plutarch says,
that the Greeks sacrificed many children annually to
Saturn ; so that we see this famous people was
sufficiently infected by this bloody superstition.

Of their Phallic rites we shall, for decency's sake,
say no more than refer to their own writers, whose
descriptions of the Bacchic and Priapic orgies, are
astonishing.

For their religious festivals and processions ; we
refer to Potter ; and shall only say that in these, every
charm of grace, every intoxication of festivity was
people so alive to such

IN ALL AGES. 61

influences ; and they were made to contribute abund-
antly to the coffers of the priests.

Another potential source of power and wealth was
augury. Augurs were a class of men frequently
priests, but always bearing much the same relation to
the pagan priesthood, that the monks did to those of
the papal hierarchy. They were but varieties of the
same class of animals of prey. They pretended to
discern and declare the will of the gods, by the flight
of birds, by the intestines of animals, and by various
other signs ; but it was through the medium of the
oracles that priestcraft awed, and practised on, the
public mind most effectually. These were situated
in solemn temples, or fearful, sacred groves ; were
surrounded by everything which could terrify and
confound the imagination ; and, accompanied by dread
and mysterious sounds, and by the cries and con-
tortions of the priest or priestess, were supposed to
proclaim the dicta of the gods. They were, con-
sequently, a mine of wealth and power to the priests.
" Of all sorts of divination," says Potter, " oracles
had always the greatest repute, as being thought to
proceed in an immediate manner from the gods ;
whereas, others were delivered by men, and had a
greater dependence on them, who might, either out
of ignorance, mistake, or out of fear, hope, or other
unlawful and base ends, conceal, or betray the truth ;
whereas, they thought the gods, who were neither
obnoxious to the anger, nor stood in need of the
rewards, nor cared for the promises of mortal, could
not be prevailed upon to do either of them. Upon
this account, oracles obtained so great credit and
esteem, that, in all doubts and disputes, their deter-
minations were held sacred and inviolable. Whence,
as Strabo reports, vast numbers flocked to them to
be resolved in all manner of doubts, and to^ ask

62 PRIESTCRAFT

counsel about the management of their affairs ; inso-
much, , that no business of great consequence was
undertaken ; scarce any war waged, peace concluded,
new form of government instituted, or new laws
enacted, without the advice and approbation of an
oracle. Croesus, before he durst venture to declare
war against the Persians, consulted not only all the
most famous oracles of Greece, but sent ambassadors
to Lybia, to ask advice of Jupiter Hammon. Minos,
the Cretan lawgiver, conversed with Jupiter, and
received instructions from him, how he might new-
model his government. Lycurgus also made visits to
the Delphian Apollo, and received from him that
platform which he afterwards communicated to the
Lacedemonians. Nor does it matter whether these
things were true or not, when lawgivers, and men of
the greatest authority, were forced to make use of
these methods to win them into compliance. My
author also goes higher, and tells us that inspired
persons were thought worthy of the greatest honour
and trusts : insomuch, that we sometimes find them
advanced to the throne, and invested with the royal
power ; — for that, being admitted to the councils of
the gods, they were best able to provide for the wel-
fare of men.

" This representation stood the priests, who had
their dependence on the oracle, in no small stead ;
for finding their credit thus thoroughly established,
they allowed no man to consult their gods before he
had offered costly sacrifices, and made rich presents
to them. Whereby it came to pass that few besides
great and wealthy men were admitted to ask their
advice ; the rest being unable to pay the charges re-
quired on that account, which contributed very much
to raise the esteem of oracles among the common peo-
ple ; men being generally apt to admire the things they

IN ALL AGES. 63

are kept at some distance from, and, on the other
hand, to contemn what they are familiarly acquainted
with. Wherefore, to keep up their esteem with the
better sort, even they were only admitted on a few
stated days : at other times, neither the greatest
prince could purchase, nor persons of the greatest
quality any way obtain an answer. Alexander him-
self was peremptorily denied by the Pythia, till she
was by downright force compelled to ascend the
tripos, when, finding herself unable to resist any
longer, she cried out, ' Thou art invincible !' which
words were thought a very lucky omen, and accepted
instead of a further oracle."

Thus we see how artfully and triumphantly the
priests had managed to enslave this great and most
intelligent of people, holding them in abject and utter
thraldom even while they imagined themselves free.
To the priests they were obliged to come for their
original civil constitutions, and these they took care
so to frame as to make themselves necessary in every
act and hour of existence, as they have done through
the universal world. Our author might have told us
however, what tricks statesmen were suffered to play
with the oracles when it suited them so to do ; he
might have added what prodigies and portents The*
mistocles caused to appear in these oracular temples,
when he wished to rouse the Greeks against Persia.
The arms of the temple at Delphi were shifted from
the interior to the front of the fane in the night, as
if done by divine hands ; they were heard to clash
as if by invisible power ; rocks fell, and thundered
down in the faces of the enemy as they approached
these sacred denies, and friends and foes were im-
pressed with an idea that the gods were present to
defend their sanctuaries. These and similar facts he
might have told us ; — but let us proceed.

64 PRIESTCRAFT

Their sacred festivals, games, and celebration of
mysteries, we have already heard were almost innu-
merable ; some occurring yearly, others monthly, so
that they were seldom without something of the kind
to occupy their attention, and bind them to the na-
tional religion. To their mysteries only can we
devote a few passages.

These have occupied much 'of the curiosity of the
learned ; and their researches have shewn incon-
testibly, that the mysteries celebrated in all ages and
nations were substantially the same. Whether they
were celebrated in Egypt, in honour of Isis and
Osiris ; in Syria of Baal ; in Phrygia, in Crete, in
Phenicia, in Lemnos, in Samothrace, in Cypress, in
India, or the British Isles ; or in the Mythratic caves
of Persia ; they had all the same object, and were
attended by the same ceremonies. In Greece there
might be differing particulars in the orgies of Bac-
chus, Ceres, Jupiter, Pan, Silenus, Rhea, Venus, or
Diana, yet their leading traits were the same. Their
objects have been stated variously ; but they appear,
in fact, to have been various, yet all subservient to
one great object, — which was, to teach the primal
unity of the Deity, notwithstanding the popular mul-
titude of gods, and to shadow out the grand doctrine
of the fall and repurification of the human soul. They
appear evidently derived from the flood ; repre-
senting a descent into the darkness of that death
which Noah's entrance into the ark indicated to the
world, and his subsequent return to life. In all,
there was a person lost, and sought after with lamen-
tation ; whether Isis was seeking Osiris, Ceres seek-
ing Proserpine ; or Thammuz, Bacchus, Pan, Jupiter,
or some other, was lamented with tears, and sought
through terrors, and afterwards rejoiced in as found.
In all, the aspirants descended to darkness as of

IN ALL AGES. 65

death, passed over a water in an ark or boat, and
came into Elysium. The accounts in Homer and
Virgil of the descent of Hercules, Ulysses and
iEneas, into hell, are considered to be but details of
what is represented in the mysteries. In whatever
mode they were celebrated, we invariably find a
certain door or gate, viewed as of primary import-
ance. Sometimes it was the door of the temple ;
sometimes the door of the consecrated grotto ; some-
times it was the hatch-way of the boat within
which the aspirant was enclosed ; sometimes a hole,
either natural or artificial, between rocks ; and some-
times a gate in the sun, moon, or planets. Through
this the initiated were born again ; and from this the
profane were excluded. The notion evidently origi-
nated from the door in the side of the ark through
which the primary epopts were admitted, while the
profane antediluvians were shut out. So sacred and
secret were these mysteries in all countries, that
whoever revealed any portion of them was instantly
put to death. The scrupulosity of the Romans with
regard to the orgies of the Bona Dea, at which women
only were admitted, is familiar to every reader of
Cicero, by his harangue against Clodius, who violated
this custom. Those who consulted the oracle of
Trophonius had to pass through darkness, and de-
scend by a ladder into the cave, with offerings of
cakes of honey ; and drank of the waters of oblivion
to forget all past cares, and of the waters of remem-
brance, to recollect what they were about to see.

They who had been initiated into the mysteries were
held to be extremely wise, and to be possessed of mo-
tives to the highest honour and purity of life ; yet it
cannot be denied that they were made, by the intro-
duction of the Phallic obscenities, a means as much
of debauchery as of refining the people. A little

66 PRIESTCRAFT

reflection, says Mr. Maurice, will soon convince us,
that as persons of either sex were promiscuously
allowed to be initiated, when the original physical
cause came to be forgotten, what a general dissipa-
tion— what a boundless immorality, would be pro-
moted by so scandalous an exhibition as awaited
them. The season of nocturnal gloom in which these
mysteries were performed, and the inviolable secresy
which accompanied the celebration of them, added to
the inviting solitude of the scene, conspired at once to
break down all the barriers of restraint, to overturn
all the fortitude of manly virtue, and to rend the veil
of modesty from the blushing face of virgin innocence.
At length licentious passion trampled upon the most
sacred obstacles which law and religion united to
raise against it. The bacchanal, frantic with mid-
night intemperance, polluted the secret sanctuary,
and prostitution sate throned upon the very altars of
the gods.

The effect upon the vulgar multitude cannot be
doubted, however different it might be upon the few
of higher intellect and higher pursuit. By them the
most sublime portions of the ancient mysteries would
be awfully felt. Nothing can be conceived more
solemn than the rites of initiation into the greater
mysteries as described by Apuleius and Dion Chry-
sostome, who had both gone through the awful cere-
mony,— nothing more tremendous than the scenery
exhibited before the eyes of the terrified aspirant.
After entering the grand vestibule of the mystic
shrine, he was led by the hierophant, amid surround-
ing darkness and incumbent horrors, through all
those extended aisles, winding avenues, and gloomy
adyta, equally belonging to the mystic temples of
Egypt, Eleusis, and India. " It was," says Sto-
baeus, as quoted by Warburton, in his Divine Lega-
tion of Moses, "a wide and fearful march through

IN ALL AGES. 67

night and darkness. Presently the ground began to
rock beneath his feet, the whole temple trembled, and
strange and dreadful voices were heard through the
midnight silence. To these succeeded other louder
and more terrific noises, resembling thunder ; while
quick and vivid flashes of lightning darted through
the cavern, displaying to his view many ghastly
sights and hideous spectres, emblematical of the va-
rious vices, diseases, infirmities, and calamities, inci-
dent to that state of terrestrial bondage from which
his struggling soul was now going to emerge, as well
as of the horrors and penal torments of the guilty in
a future state. The temple of the Cecropian goddess
roared from its inmost recesses ; the holy torches of
Eleusis were waved on high by mimic furies ; the
snakes of Triptolemus hissed a loud defiance, and the
howling of the infernal dogs resounded through the
awful gloom, which resembled the malignant and
imperfect light of the moon when partially obscured
by clouds. At this period, all the pageants of vulgar
idolatry — all the train of gods, supernal and infernal,
passed in awful succession before him ; and a hymn,
called the Theology of Idols, recounting the gene-
alogy and functions of each, was sung: afterwards
the whole fabulous detail was solemnly recanted by
the mystagogue ; a divine hymn, in honour of Eter-
nal and Immutable Truth, was chanted, and the
profounder mysteries commenced. And now, arrived
on the verge of death and initiation, everything wears
a dreadful aspect ; it is all horror, trembling, and
astonishment. An icy chilliness seizes his limbs ; a
copious dew, like the damp of real death, bathes his
temples ; he staggers, and his senses begin to fail,
when the scene is of a sudden changed, and the doors
of the interior, and splendidly illumined temple are
thrown wide open. A miraculous and divine light

f 2

68 PRIESTCRAFT

discloses itself, and shining plains, and flowering
meadows open on all hands before him. 'Accessi
confinium mortis,' says Apuleius, ' et calcato Proser-
pinae limine, per omnia vectus elementa remeavi;
nocte medio solem candido coruscantem lumine.'
Arrived at the bourn of mortality, after having trod
the gloomy threshold of Proserpine, I passed rapidly
through all the surrounding elements, and, at deep
midnight, beheld the sun shining in meridian splen-
dour. The clouds of mental error, and the shades of
real darkness being now alike dissipated, both the
soul and the body of the initiated experienced a de-
lightful vicissitude ; and, while the latter, purified
with lustrations, bounded in a blaze of glory, the for-
mer dissolved in a tide of overwhelming transport.
At that period of virtuous and triumphant exaltation,
according to the divine Plato, they saw celestial
beauty in all the dazzling radiance of its perfection ;
when, joining with the glorified chorus, they were
admitted to the beatific vision, and were initiated into
the most blessed of all mysteries."

The author of the apocryphal Wisdom of Solo-
mon has preserved a most curious Jewish tradition,
relative to the nature of the Egyptian plague of
darkness, which intimates that the votaries of Osiris
were visited with the very terrors which they em-
ployed in his mysteries. The passage is not only
strikingly illustrative of what is gone before, but is
extremely sublime. —

" When unrighteous men thought to oppress the
holy nation, they, being shut up in their houses, the
prisoners of darkness and fettered with the bonds of
a long night, lay there, fugitives from the Eternal
Providence. For, while they were supposed to lie
hid in their secret sins, they were scattered under a
dark veil of -forgetfulness, being horridly astonished,
and troubled with strange apparitions. For, neither

IN ALL AGES.

69

might the corner that held them keep them from fear,
but noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about
them, and sad visions appeared unto them with heavy-
countenances. No power of the fire might give them
light, neither could the bright flames of the stars
endure to lighten that horrible night. Only there ap-
peared unto them a fire kindled of itself, very dread-
ful ; for being much terrified, they thought the things
they saw to be worse than the sight they saw not.
As for the illusions of art magic, they were put
down, and their vaunting in wisdom was reproved
with disgrace ; for they who promised to drive away
terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick them-
selves of fear, worthy to be laughed at. For though
no terrible thing did fear them, yet, being scared with
beasts that passed by, and hissing of serpents, they
died for fear, refusing to look upon the air, which
could on no side be avoided ; they sleeping the same
sleep that night, wherein they could do nothing, and
which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevit-
able hell, were partly vexed with monstrous appa-
ritions, and partly fainted, their heart failing them
— for sudden fear, and unlooked-for, came upon them.
So, then, whosoever fell down, was straitly kept,
shut up in a prison without iron bars. Whether it
were a whistling wind or a melodious noise of birds
among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of
water running violently, or a hideous noise of stones
cast down, or a running that could not be seen of
skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage
wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow
mountains ; these things made them to swoon for
fear. For the whole world shined with light, and
none were hindered in their labour ; over them only
was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness
which should afterwards receive them."

On this interesting subject it would be easy to fol-

70 PRIESTCRAFT

low through the mysteries of all nations, and write a
volume ; but after merely stating that the initiatory
ceremonies of Freemasons, and those of the Vehme
Gericht, or secret tribunal, once existing in Germany,
seem to derive their origin from this source, I shall
merely give a few words of Taliesin, relative to their
celebration in Britain, and return to the regular order
of my subject.

Among the apparatus of the art magic which the
Druids used in this ancient ceremony of being born
again, was a cauldron ; and, as in all other mysteries,
and in the initiation of a Freemason, men with
naked swords stood within the portal to cut down
every coward who would fain turn back before he
had passed through the terrors of inauguration ; the
Druids also, it appears, had to sail over the water in
this ceremony.

" Thrice the number," says Taliesin, " that would
have filled Prydwen (the magic shield of Arthur, in
which he sailed with seven champions), we entered
upon the deep, — excepting seven, none have returned
from Caer Sidi. Am I not contending for the praise
of that lore which was four times reviewed in the
quadrangular enclosure ? As the first sentence, was
it not uttered from the cauldron 1 Is not this the
cauldron of the ruler of the deep ? With the ridge
of pearls around its border, it will not boil the food
of a coward who is not bound by his oath. Against
him will be lifted the bright-gleaming sword, and in
the hand of the sword-bearer shall he be left ; and
before the gates of hell shall the horns of light be
burning. When we went with Arthur in his splen-
did labours, excepting seven, none returned from
Caer Vediwid. Am I not contending for the honour
of a lore which deserves attention ? In the quad-
rangular enclosure, in the island with the strong door,
the twilight and the pitchy darkness were mixed

IN ALL AGES. 71

together, while bright wine was the beverage placed
before the narrow circle. Thrice the number that
would have filled Prydwen we embarked upon the
sea; — excepting seven, none returned from Caer
Rigor. I will not redeem the multitudes with the
ensign of the governor. Beyond the enclosure of
glass they beheld not the prowess of Arthur. They
knew not on what day the stroke would be given,
nor at what hour in the serene day the agitated per-
son would be born, or who preserved his going into the
dales of the possession of the waters. They knew
not the brindled ox with the thick headband. When
we went with Arthur of mournful memory, except-
ing seven, none returned from Caer Vandwy."

Caer Rigor, Sidi, Vediwid, etc., are but different
names for the Druidical enclosure of Stonehenge, or,
as they styled it, the Ark of the World. The num-
ber seven have evidently reference to the seven per-
sons of the ark; Noah himself being represented,
according to custom, by Arthur.

In another place Taliesin alludes to the doctrine
of the Metempsychosis, which was taught in those
mysteries. " I was first modelled in the form of a
pure man, in the hall of Ceridwen (the ship god-
dess), who subjected me to penance. Though small
within my ark and modest in my deportment, I was
great. A sanctuary carried me above the surface
of the earth. Whilst I was enclosed within its ribs
the sweet awen rendered me complete : and my law,
without audible language, was imparted to me by
the old giantess darkly smiling in her wrath ; but her
claim was not regretted when she set sail. I fled in
the form of a fair grain of pure wheat ; upon the
edge of a covering cloth she caught me in her fangs.
In appearance she was as large as a proud mare,
which she also resembled (the Ceres-Hippa of the
Greeks, who similarly received Bacchus into her

72 PRIESTCRAFT

womb) ; then was she swelling-out, like a ship upon
the waters. Into a dark receptacle she cast me.
She carried me back into the sea of Dylan. It was
an auspicious omen to me when she happily suffo-
cated me ; God, the Lord, freely set me at large."

To a timid aspirant, the hierophant says, "Thy
coming without external purity, is a pledge that I
will not receive thee. Take out the gloomy one.
Out of the receptacle which is thy aversion, did I
obtain the rainbow." — See Davis's Celtic Mythology.

It may seem widely wandering from Greece to
Britain ; but it only shews more strikingly the one-
ness of the Pagan faith. And now to return.

The priests, thus providing for the tastes of all par-
ties, wealth, power, and unlimited influence became
their own. All these things were sources of gain ; and
whoever would form some idea of the wealth of the
Grecian priesthood, let him read in Herodotus of the
immense riches conferred on the oracular temples by
Crcesus and other monarchs. Let him also learn the
following particulars from Diodorus Siculus: "The
principal hoards of treasure, both in bullion and
coined money, were in their temples, which were
crowded with presents of immense value, brought by
the superstitious from every part of Greece. These
temples were considered as national banks ; and the
priests officiated as bankers, — not always, indeed, the
most honest, as was once proved at Athens, where
the state treasurers, having expended or embezzled
the public money, had the audacity to set fire to that
part of the temple of Minerva where the treasure
was contained ; by which sacrilegious act that mag-
nificent fane was near being wholly consumed. Their
purpose, however, was fully answered, since the re-
gisters of the temple were reported to have perished
with the treasures, and all responsibility precluded."

The temple just mentioned, the superb fane of

IN ALL AGES. 73

Jupiter Olympius, at Elis, and that of Apollo at
Delphi, were the principal of the three sacred deposi-
tories. The priests at all times concealed the total
sum of the treasures lodged in them with too much
caution for us to know the amount ; yet, when the
Phocenses, urged to despair by the exactions of the
Thebans, seized on the treasures of Delphi, they
amounted to 10,000 talents — above 2,250,000Z. ster-
ling— and probably that was but a small portion of
what holy perfidy had previously secured. The
deposits at the great temple of Ephesus, considered
through all ages as inviolable, probably far exceeded
those of the three last mentioned.

The spirit of avarice, which in all times character-
ized the priesthood, and prompted them to such
immense accumulation, is not more detestable than
dangerous ; for, let any one reflect what must be the
consequence to a nation where the monarch and the
priest are in coalition, as is usually the case, and the
monarch, as is usually the case too, is watching to
extinguish every spark of popular freedom ; — what, I
say, must be the consequence when such over-
whelming resources are within his reach ? The fate
of Greece is a melancholy warning on the subject.
These immense treasures were eventually seized
upon by rapacious conquerors, and their soldiers paid
by them to enslave these renowned states ; and thus
the coin drained from the people by the hands of
priestcraft, became in the hands of kingcraft, the
means of their destruction. So has it been in every
country. So was it in Palestine — so in ancient
Rome — in Constantinople ; and so pre-eminently in
India. To that country let us now proceed.

74 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER VIII.

INDIA.

The ancient and venerable Hindostan furnishes our
last and most triumphant demonstration of the nature
of pagan priestcraft. In Greece we have seen that,
notwithstanding the daring, restless, and intellectual
character of the people, it contrived to obtain a most
signal influence ; but in India, with a people of a
gentler temperament, and where no bold spirits, like
Homer and the philosophers of Greece, had ventured to
make the national theology popularly familiar, priest-
craft assumed its most fearless and determined air. In
all other lands it did not fail to place itself in the first
rank of honour and power ; in this it went a step
further, — and promulgating a dogma diametrically op-
posite to the humanizing doctrine of the Bible, that,
" God made of one blood all the nations of the
earth ;" it riveted its chains indissolubly on the
mind of that mighty empire. Priestcraft here ex-
hibits a marvellous spectacle. The perfection of its
craft, and the utter selfishness of its spirit, are pro-
claimed by the fact of millions on millions bound,
from the earliest ages to the present hour, in the
chains of the most slavish and soul-quelling castes,
and in the servility of a religious creed so subtilly
framed, that it almost makes hopeless the moral rege-
neration of the swarming myriads of these vast regions.
I have already repeatedly stated that it partakes, in

IN ALL AGES. 75

common with the whole pagan world, in one general
mythological system, and I shall not dwell on its
features more particularly. In Maurice's copious
Indian Antiquities, whence I shall chiefly draw what
I have to say, may be found ample details of
the Hindoo religion. It is well known, from a
variety of works, that this venerable empire claims
the highest antiquity, not merely of national exist-
ence, but of the possession of knowledge in philo-
sophy, literature, and the arts ; it is equally known,
too, since Sir William Jones laid open the antique
stores of the Sanscrit language, that this religion has
all the common features of those mythologies, on
which I have already dwelt. It has its triad of
gods, its doctrine of Metempsychosis, its practice of
the Phallic licentiousness, and the horrors of human
sacrifice and self-immolation. Who has not heard
of the burning of Indian widows — of the bloody and
wholesale self-slaughter at the temple of Jaggernath
— of the destruction of children, now restrained by
British interference — and of the absolute dominance
of the Brahmins? I shall pass, therefore, hastily
over these matters, and confine myself principally to
the task of displaying, in the Brahminical hierarchy,
an example of priestcraft in its most decided, undis-
guised, subtle, and triumphant character, — priest-
craft, at once in full flower and full fruit; in that
state at which it has always aimed, but never, not
even in the bloody reign of the Papal church, ever
attained elsewhere, — stamping itself on the heart of a
great nation in its broadest and most imperishable
style, in all its avowed despotism, icy selfishness, im-
perturbable pride, and cool arrogance of fanatical power.
Two great sects exist here, — those of Buddh and
Brahma, which preserve an inviolable separation,
except in the temple of Jaggernath, where, seeming

76 PRIESTCRAFT

to forget all their former prejudices, they unite in
the commission of lust and cruelty.

It is to the Brahminical sect, as the most predomi-
nant, that I shall principally confine my remarks.
These profess the mildest of doctrines, refuse to kill
any living creature for food, and subsist on milk,
fruit, and vegetables. Yet, what is at first sight
most remarkable, and what cannot be accounted for
by any other means than that of the immutable
nature of corrupted religion, they not only inflict on
themselves, under the character of Yogees, the most
horrible austerities ; but have for ages encouraged the
destruction of female children ; do to the present time
encourage, and under the influence of the most
powerful social causes, render almost necessary the
immolation of widows; sanction and stimulate, an-
nually, thousands of simple victims to destroy them-
selves at the shrine of the monstrous Jaggernath ;
and, till recently, sacrificed, not only animals but men.

Of human sacrifices, the express ordination of the
Rudhiradhyaya, or sanguinary chapter of the Calica
Purana, in the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches,
is sufficient testimony. No precepts can be con-
ceived more express, nor, indeed, more horrible, than
those which this tremendous chapter enjoins.

"Bya human sacrifice, attended with the forms
here laid down, Deva, the goddess Cali, the black
goddess of destruction, is pleased 1000 years.

" By a human sacrifice, Camachya, Chandica, and
Bhairava, who assume any shape, are pleased 1000
years. An oblation of blood which has been ren-
dered pure by holy texts, is equal to ambrosia ; the
head and flesh also afford much delight to Chan-
dica. Let, therefore, the learned, when paying ado-
ration to the goddess, offer blood and the head ; and
when performing the sacrifice to fire, make oblations
of flesh."

IN ALL AGES. . 77

Here follow numerous minute directions, none of
which I shall quote, except one ; — itself sufficiently
horrid.

" Let the sacrificer say, Hrang, hring ! Cali, Cali !
O, horrid-toothed goddess ! eat, cut, destroy all the
malignant ; cut with this axe ; bind, bind ; seize,
seize ; drink blood ! spheng, spheng ! secure, secure !
salutations to Cali!"

For the Phallic contaminations, let this pasage
from Maurice suffice. Abundant matter of the like
nature might be added ; but the less said on this
subject the better. Of the recent existence of such
things, Buchanan's account of the temple of Jagger-
nath may satisfy the curious reader.

" What I shall offer on this head will be taken
from two authentic books, written at very different
periods, and therefore fully decisive as to the general
prevalence of the institution from age to age, — the
Anciennes Relations, and Les Voyages de M. Ta-
vernier, — the former written in the 9th, the latter in
the 17th century.

" Incited, unquestionably, by the hieroglyphic em-
blems of vice so conspicuously elevated and strik-
ingly painted in the temple of Mahadeo, the priests
of that deity industriously selected the most beautiful
females that could be found, and, in their tenderest
years, with great pomp and solemnity, consecrated
them, as it is impiously called, to the service of the
divinity of the pagoda. They were trained in every
art to delude and delight ; and, to the fascination of
external beauty, their artful betrayers added the
attractions arising from mental accomplishments.
Thus was an invariable rule of the Hindoos, that
women have no concern with literature, dispensed with
on this infamous occasion. The moment these hap-
less creatures reached maturity, they fell victims to

78 PRIESTCRAFT

the lust of the Brahmins. They were early taught
to practise the most alluring blandishments, to roll
the expressive eye of wanton pleasure, and to invite
to criminal indulgence by stealing upon the beholder
the tender look of voluptuous languishing. They
were instructed to mould their elegant and airy forms
into the most enticing attitudes, and the most las-
civious gestures, while the rapid and most graceful
motion of their feet, adorned with golden bells and
glittering with jewels, kept unison with the exquisite
melody of their voices. Every pagoda has a band of
these young syrens, whose business on great festivals
is to dance in public before the idol, to sing hymns in
his honour, and in private to enrich the treasury of the
pagoda by the wages of prostitution. These women
are not, however, regarded in a dishonourable light ;
they are considered as wedded to the idol, and they par-
take the veneration paid to him. They are forbidden
ever to desert the pagoda where they are educated,
and are never permitted to marry ; but the offspring,
if any, of their criminal embraces, are considered
sacred to the idol: the boys are taught to play on
the sacred instruments used at the festivals ; and the
daughters are devoted to the abandoned occupation
of their mothers.

" The reader has, doubtless, heard and read fre-
quently of the degeneracy and venality of Priests;
and we know from Herodotus, what scandalous pros-
titutions were suffered in honour of Mylitta; but a
system of corruption, so systematical, so deliberate,
and so nefarious, — and that professedly carried on in
the name, and for the advantage of religion, — stands
perhaps unrivalled in the history of the world, and
the annals of infamy. It was by degrees that the
Eleusinian worship arrived at the point of its extreme
enormity; and the obscenities, finally prevalent.

IN ALL AGES.

were equally regretted and disclaimed by the insti-
tutes ; but in India we see an avowed plan of shame-
less seduction and debauchery: the priest himself
converted into a base procurer; and the pagoda itself
a public brothel. The devout Mahometan traveller,
whose journey in India, in the ninth century, has
been published by M. Renaudot, and from which
account this description is partly taken, concludes
the article by a solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty,
that he and his nation were delivered from the errors
of infidelity, and were unstained by the enormities of
so criminal a devotion."

In a country so immensely rich, and so obedient
to the dictations of priestcraft, the avarice of the
sacerdotal tribe would accumulate enormous treasures.
We have recently alluded to the hordes gathered by
priestly hands into the temples of Greece. In the
temple of Belus in Assyria, there were three prodi-
gious statues, not of cast, but of beaten gold, of
Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea. That of Jupiter was erect,
in a walking attitude; forty feet in height; and
weighed a thousand Babylonian talents. The statue
of Rhea was of the same weight, but sitting on a
throne of gold, with two lions standing before her,
and two huge serpents in silver, each weighing thirty
talents. Juno was erect; weighed eight hundred
talents; her right hand grasped a serpent by the
head, and her left ' a golden sceptre, encrusted with
gems. Before these statues stood an altar of beaten
gold, forty feet long, fifteen broad, and five hundred
talents in weight. On this altar stood two vast
flagons, each weighing thirty talents ; two censers for
incense, each five hundred talents ; and, finally, three
vessels for the consecrated wine, weighing nine hun-
dred talents.

The statue of Nebuchadnezzar, in the plain of

80 PRIESTCRAFT

Dura, formed of the gold heaped up by David and
Solomon, Dr. Prideaux calculated at one thousand
talents of gold, in value three millions and a half
sterling.

Herodotus tells us, that Croesus frequently sent to
Delphi amazing presents; and burnt, in one holo-
caust, beds of gold and silver, ornamental vessels of
the same metals, purple robes, silken carpets, and
other rich furniture, which he consumed in one pile,
to render that oracle propitious ; while the wealthiest
citizens of Sardis threw into the fire their most costly
furniture : so that out of the melted mass, one hun-
dred and seventeen golden tiles were cast; the least,
three spans long, the largest six, but all one span in
thickness; which were placed in the temple.

When Cambyses burnt the temple of Thebes in
Egypt, there were saved from the flames three
hundred talents of gold, and two thousand three
hundred talents of silver ; and amongst the spoils
of that temple was a stupendous circle of gold, in-
scribed with the Zodiacal characters, and astrono-
mical figures, which encircled the tomb of Oxymandias.
At Memphis he obtained still greater sacred wealth.

These seem astounding facts ; but before the sacer-
dotal wealth and templar splendour of India, they
shrink into insignificance. The principal use which
the Indians seem to have made of the immense
quantities of bullion, from age to age, imported into
their empire, was to melt it down into statues of
their deities ; if, indeed, by that title we may deno-
minate the personified attitudes of the Almighty,
and the elements of nature. Their pagodas were
crowned with these golden and silver statues ; they
thought any inferior metal must degrade the divinity.
Every house too, was crowded with statues of their
ancestors ; those ancestors that were exalted to the

IN ALL AGES. 81

stars for their piety, or valour. The very altars of
the temples were of massy gold ; the incense flamed
in censers of gold, and golden chalices bore their
sacred oil, honey, and wine. The temple of Auruna,
the day-star, had its lofty walls of prophyry internally
covered with broad plates of gold, sculptured in rays,
that, diverging every way, dazzled the beholder;
while the radiant image of the deity burned in gems
of infinite variety and unequalled beauty, on the
spangled floor. The floor of the great temple of
Naugracut, even so late as in the time of Mandesloe,
was covered with plates of gold; and thus the
Hindoo, in his devotion, trampled upon the god of
half mankind.

In the processions also, made in honour of their
idols, the utmost magnificence prevailed. They then
brought forth all the wealth of the temple ; and every
order of people strove to outvie each other in display-
ing their riches, and adding to the pomp. The
elephants marched first, richly decorated with gold
and silver ornaments, studded with precious stones ;
chariots overlaid with those metals, and loaded with
them in ingots, advanced next; then followed the
sacred steers, coupled together with yokes of gold,
and a train of the noblest and most beautiful beasts of
the forest, by nature fierce and sanguinary, but
rendered mild and tractable by the skill of man : an
immense multitude of priests carrying vessels, plates,
dishes, and other utensils, all of gold, adorned with
diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, for the sumptuous
feast of which the gods were to partake, brought up
the rear. During all this time, the air was rent with
the sound of various instruments; martial and
festive; and the dancing girls displayed in their
sumptuous apparel, the wealth of whole provinces,
exhausted to decorate beauty devoted to religion.

82 PRIESTCRAFT

The Arabians burst upon India, like a torrent; —
their merciless grasp seized the whole prey! The
western provinces first felt their fury. The Rajah of
Lahore, when taken, had about his neck sixteen
strings of jewels; each of which was valued at a
hundred and eighty thousand rupees : and the whole
at three hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling.
A sum, however, comparatively trifling, when com-
pared with that of which the Sultan of Gazna after-
wards became master in his eruption into that province :
and which Mirkhond states at seven millions of coin
in gold, seven hundred maunds of gold in ingots,
together with an inestimable quantity of pearls and
precious stones. The maund is a Persian weight,
never estimated at less than forty pounds.

Let us attend this valiant marauder on another or
two of his plundering expeditions into Hindostan.
At the holy fane of Kreeshna, at Mathura, he found
five great idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies, of
immense value. He found also three hundred idols
of silver, which being melted down, loaded as many
camels with bullion ; the usual load of a camel being
from seven hundred to one thousand two hundred
pounds weight. At the great temple of Sumnaut, he
found many thousands of gold and silver idols of
smaller magnitude ; a chain of gold, which was sus-
pended from the roof, and weighed forty maunds;
besides an inestimable horde of jewels of the first
water. This prince, a day or two before his death,
ordered his whole treasury to be placed before him ;
and having for some time, from his throne, feasted
his eyes on the innumerable sacks of gold, and
caskets of precious stones, burst into tears — perhaps
from the recollection of the bloodshed and atrocities
by which they had been accumulated- — but more
probably from the feeling of the vanity of all human

IN ALL AGES. 83

cupidity and power, — a dismal conviction that they
could not save him, but that they must pass to other
hands, and he to the doom of eternity.

Immense quantities of the beautiful coins of Greece
and Rome are supposed to have passed to India in
the great trade of the ancients with it, for spices, silks,
gems, and other precious articles, and to have been
melted down in the crucible, without the least regard
to the grandeur of their design, the majesty of the
characters impressed, or the beauty of their execution,
and went to swell the magnificence of the pagodas.
We are well assured, that all the great pagodas of
India had complete sets, amounting to an immense
number, of the avaters and deities, which were deemed
degraded if they were of baser metal than silver
and gold; except in those instances where their
religion required their idol to be of stone, as Jagger-
nath; which had, however, the richest jewels of
Golconda for eyes ; and Yishnu, in the great basin of
Catmandu, in Nepaul. Such was the wealth ga-
thered by the Tartars in this wonderful country, that
Mahmoud of Gazna made feasts that lasted a month;
and the officers of his army rodexm saddles of gold,
glittering with precious stones; and his descendant,
Timur, made a feast on a delightful plain, called
Canaugha, or the treasury of roses, at which was
exhibited such a display of gold and jewels, that in
comparison, the riches of Xerxes and Darius were
trifling. The treasures which Timur took in Delhi,
were most enormous ; — precious stones, pearls, rubies,
and diamonds, thousands of which were torn from the
ears and necks of the native women ; and gold and
gems from their arms, ancles, and dress : gold and
silver vessels, money, and bullion, were carried away
in such profusion by the army, that the common
soldiers absolutely refused to encumber themselves

84 PRIESTCRAFT

with more ; and an abundant harvest of plunder was
left to future invaders.

Mahmoud of Gazna hearing astonishing accoun
of the riches of the great pagoda of Sumnaut, whose
roof was covered with plates of gold and encircled
with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones,
besieged the place, and took it. On entering the
temple, he was struck with astonishment at the
inestimable riches it contained. In the fury of his
Mahommedan zeal against idols, he smote off the
nose of the great image. A crowd of Brahmins,
frantic at his treatment of their god, offered the most
extravagant sums for his desistance ; but the soldiers
of Mahmoud only proceeded with greater ardour to
demolish it, when behold ! on breaking its body, it
was found to be hollow, and to contain an infinite
variety of diamonds, rubies, and pearls of a water so
pure, and a magnitude so uncommon, that the be
holders were overwhelmed with astonishment. But
the riches accumulated by the priests of this affluent
region were so immense, that they exceed the power
of the imagination to grasp them ; and I shall leave
this subject with what Mr. Orme, in his History of
Hindostan, tells us: — that the Brahmins slumbered
in the most luxurious repose in these splendid
pagodas ; and that the numbers accommodated in the
body of the great ones, was astonishing. He acquaints
us that pilgrims came from all parts of the Peninsula to
worship at that of Seringham, but none without an
offering of money ; that a large part of the revenue
of the island is allotted for the maintenance of the
Brahmins who inhabit it ; and that these, with their
families, formerly composed a multitude, not less in
number than forty thousand souls, supported with-
out labour, by the liberality of superstition.

So much for the ease and affluence of the Brah-

t

IN ALL AGES. 85

minical life ; now for a glance at that system which
they had rendered so prolific of good things; — a
system, the most awful that ever proceeded from the
genius of priestcraft, fertile in cunning and profitable
schemes. I have already shewn that in all nations
the priests placed themselves at the head, and even
controlled the king, as they often chose him. But in
India, the Brahmins went, as I have remarked, still
further. Here, in order to rivet for ever their chains
on the people, they did not merely represent them-
selves as a noble and inviolable race, but they
divided the whole community into four castes. They
wrote a book, and entitled it, " The Institutes of
Menu," the son of Brahma. This book contained
the whole code of their religious laws, which, as pro-
ceeding from the divinity, were to last for all time, —
be for ever and indissolubly binding on every Hindoo ;
and not to be violated in the smallest degree, except
on pain of forfeiting all civil privileges and enjoyments,
of life itself, and of incurring the torments of hell.
These castes were to preserve for ever their respective
stations. Those born in one, were not only not to
pass into another, but every man was bound to follow
the profession of his father. Whatever might be the
difference of genius, it must be crushed; whatever
desire to amend the condition of life, it must be
extinguished ; all variety of mind, all variations of
physical constitution, all unfitness for one trade,
station, or pursuit, went for nothing : — to this most
infernal of priestly impositions, man, with all his
hopes and desires, his bodily weaknesses, his mental
aspirations, or repugnances, must succumb, and be
lulled, or rather, cramped into an everlasting stupor,
that the privileged Brahmin might tax him and
terrify him, and live upon his labours, in the bound-
less enjoyment of his own pride, and insolence, and

S6 PRIESTCRAFT

lust. " By this arrangement," says Mr. Maurice,
" it should he remembered, the happiness and se-
curity of a vast empire was preserved through a long
series of ages under their early sovereigns ; by curb-
ing the fiery spirits of ambitious individuals, intestine
feuds were, in a great measure, prevented ; the wants
of an immense population were amply provided for
by the industry of the labouring classes ; and the
several branches of trade and manufacture were
carried to the utmost degree of attainable perfection."
A singular kind of happiness, and one which none
but a priest could have a conception of. To plunge
a great nation into the everlasting sleep and slug-
gishness of ecclesiastical despotism, is to secure its
happiness ! — the happiness of beasts maintained for
the value of their labour, and fattened for the
butcher ; — a happiness, which in the very sentence
preceding, the writer terms " a barbarous attempt to
chain down the powers of the human soul, to check the
ardour of emulation, and damp the fire of genius."

To establish this system the Brahmins resorted to
the daring fraud of representing Menu — supposed to
be Noah — as not " making all men of the same
blood," but as producing four different tribes of men.
The first, the Brahmins, from his mouth ; the
second, the Kettri, or Rajahs, from his arm ; the
third, the Bice, or merchants, from his thigh; and
the fourth, the Sooder, or labouring tribe, from his
foot ! Thus this doctrine, once received as true, an
everlasting and impassable bar was placed between
each tribe — divine authority. That it should not be
endangered, the land of India was declared holy ; and
the Hindoos were forbidden, by all the terrors of tem-
poral and eternal penalties, to go out of it. The
Brahmins having thus, in the early ages of supersti-
tious ignorance, taken this strong ground, proceeded

IN ALL AGES. 87

to fortify it still further. The Rajahs, or provincial
rulers were all chosen from their own, or the war-
tribe ; and the Marajah, or supreme King, was
always chosen by them, often from themselves, and
was entirely in their hands. By them he was
educated, and moulded to their wishes ; they were
appointed, by these divine institutes, his guardians,
and perpetual, inalienable counsellors.

Having thus firmly seized and secured the whole
political power, they had only to rule and enrich
themselves out of a nation of slaves, at their plea-
sure ; paying them with promises of future hap-
piness, or terrifying them by threats of future
vengeance, into perfect passiveness ; and so com-
pletely had this succeeded that, for thousands of
years, their system has continued; and it is the
opinion of Sir William Jones, that so ingeniously is
it woven into the souls of the Hindoos, that they
will be the very last people converted to Christianity.
For what, indeed, can be done with a nation who,
from time immemorial, have been accustomed to
regard their priests as beings of a higher nature, —
their laws as emanations from Heaven, — and them-
selves as the creatures of an unescapable destiny :
who, on the one hand, are stunned with fear of future
torments, and, on the other, are exposed to the
dagger of the first man they meet, authorized by
those pretendedly divine institutes to cut down every
apostate that he encounters? From such a con-
summate labyrinth of priestly art nothing short of
a miracle seems capable of rescuing them.

The Brahmins, like the popish priests, for the arts of
priests are the same everywhere, reserve to themselves
the inviolable right of reading the Vedas, or holy
books, and thus impose on the people what doctrines
they please. So scrupulously do they guard against

88 PRIESTCRAFT

the exposure of their real contents, that it is only in
comparatively modern times that they have become
known. A singular story is told of the Emperor
Akbar, who, desiring to learn the Hindoo tenets,
applied to the Brahmins, and was refused. Here-
upon he had the brother of his faithful minister,
Abul Fazil, a youth, brought up with a Brahmin,
under a feigned character : but, after a residence of
ten years, and at the moment of being about to
return to court, owing to his attachment to the
Brahmin's daughter, he confessed the fraud, and
would have been instantly stabbed by his preceptor,
had he not entreated him for mercy on his knees,
and bound himself by the most solemn oaths, not to
translate the Vedas, nor reveal the mysteries of the
Brahmin creed. These oaths he faithfully kept
during the life of the old Brahmin ; but afterwards
he conceived himself absolved from them, and to him
we owe the publication of the real contents of those
sacred volumes.

But let us look at the system a little more at
large. " Though," says Maurice, " the functions of
government by the laws of Menu devolved on the
Kettri, or Rajah tribe ; yet it is certain that in every
age of the Indian empire, aspiring Brahmins have
usurped and swayed the imperial sceptre. But, in
fact, there was no necessity for the Brahmin to
grasp at empire, — he wielded both the empire and
the monarch. By an overstrained conception of the
priestly character, artfully encouraged, for political
purposes, by the priest himself, and certainly not
justified by any precept given by Noah to his pos-
terity, the Brahmin stood in the place of deity to the
infatuated sons of Indian superstition ; the will of
heaven was thought to issue from his lips ; and his
decision was reverenced as the fiat of destiny. Thus

IN ALL AGES.

89

boasting the positive interposition of the Deity in the
fabrication of its singular institutions ; guarded from
infraction by the terror of exciting the divine wrath ;
and directed principally by the sacred tribe, the
Indian government may be considered as a theocracy
— a theocracy the more terrible, because the name of
God was perverted to sanction and support the most
dreadful species of despotism ; — a despotism which,
not content with subjugating the body, tyrannized
over the prostrate faculties of the enslaved mind.

" An assembly of Brahmins sitting in judgment on
a vicious, a tyrannical king, may condemn him to
death; and the sentence is recorded to have been
executed ; but no crime affects the life of a Brahmin.
He may suffer temporary degradation from his caste,
but his blood must never stain the sword of justice ;
he is a portion of the Deity. He is inviolable ! he is
invulnerable ! he is immortal !

" In eastern climes, where despotism has ever
reigned in its meridian terror, in order to impress
the deeper awe and respect upon the crowd that daily
thronged around the tribunal, the hall of justice was
anciently surrounded with the ministers of vengeance,
who generally inflicted in presence of the monarch
the sentence to which the culprit was doomed. The
envenomed serpent which was to sting him to death ;
the enraged elephant that was to trample him beneath
its feet ; the dreadful instruments that were to rend
open his bowels, to tear his lacerated eye from the
socket, to impale alive, or saw the shuddering wretch
asunder, were constantly at hand. The audience
chamber, with the same view, was decorated with
the utmost cost and magnificence, and the East was
rifled of its jewels to adorn it. Whatever little
credit may in general be due to Philostratus, his de-
scription of the palace of Musicanus too nearly resem-

90 PRIESTCRAFT

bles the accounts of our own countrymen, of the
present magnificence of some of the rajahs, to be
doubted, especially in those times when the hoarded
wealth of India had not been pillaged. The arti-
ficial vines of gold, adorned with buds of various
colours in jewellery, and thick set with precious
stones, emeralds, and rubies, hanging in clusters to
resemble grapes in their different stages to maturity :
the silver censers of perfume constantly borne before
the ruler as a god : the robe of gold and purple with
which he was invested ; and the litter of gold fringed
with pearls, in which he was carried in a march, or to
the chase, — these were the appropriate ornaments and
distinctions of an Indian monarch.

" In short, whatever could warmly interest the
feelings, and strongly agitate the passions of men ;
whatever influences hope ; excites terror ; all the
engines of a most despotic superstition and a most
refined policy, were set at work for the purpose of
chaining down to the prescribed duties of his caste
the mind of the bigoted Hindoo. Hence his un-
altered, unalterable attachment to the national code,
and the Brahminical creed. As it has been in India
from the beginning, so will it continue to the end of
time. For the daring culprit who violates either,
heaven has no forgiveness, and earth no place of
shelter or repose !

" An adultress is condemned to be devoured alive
by dogs in the public market-place. The adulterer
is doomed to be bound to an iron bed, heated red-
hot, and burned to death. But what is not a little
remarkable, for the same crime a Brahmin is only to
be punished with ignominious tonsure.

" For insulting a Brahmin, an iron style, ten fin-
gers long, shall be thrust, red-hot, down the culprit's
mouth. For offering only to instruct him in his

IN ALL AGES. 91

profession, boiling oil shall be dropped in bis mouth
and ears. For stealing kine, belonging to priests,
the offender shall instantly lose half one foot. An
assaulter of a Brahmin, with intent to kill, shall
remain in hell for a hundred years; for actually
striking him, with like intent, a thousand years. But
though such frequent exceptions occur in favour of
Brahmins, none are made in favour of kings ! The
Brahmin, — eldest-born of the gods, — who loads their
altars with incense, who feeds them with clarified
honey, and whose, in fact, is the wealth of the whole
world, ever keeps his elevated station. To maintain
him in holy and voluptuous indolence, the Kettri,
or Rajah, exposes his life in front of battle ; the
merchant covers the ocean with his ships ; the toiling
husbandman incessantly tills the burning soil of India.
We canriot doubt, after this, which of the Indian
castes compiled this volume from the remembered
Institutes of Menu.

" The everlasting servitude of the Soodra tribe is
riveted upon that unfortunate caste by the laws of
destiny ; since the Soodra was born a slave, and even
when emancipated by his indulgent master, a slave
he must continue : for, of a state which is natural to him,
by whom can he be divested ? The Soodra must be
contented to serve ; this is his unalterable doom. To
serve in the family of a Brahmin is the highest glory,
and leads him to beatitude."

There is, however, a fifth tribe, — that of the out-
casts from all the rest, — the Chandelahs ; those who
have lost caste, and the children of mixed marriages,
that abhorrence of the Hindoo code, for, if once per-
mitted, it would overturn the whole artful system. It
is ordained that the Chandelah exist remote from
their fellow-creatures, amid the dirt and filth of the
suburbs. Their sole wealth must consist in dogs and

92 PRIESTCRAFT

asses ; their clothes must be the polluted mantles of
the dead ; their dishes for food, broken pots ; their
ornaments, rusty iron ; their food must be given them
in potsherds, at a distance, that the giver may not be
defiled by the shade of their outcast bodies. Their
business is to carry out the corpses of those who die
without kindred ; they are the public executioners ;
and the whole that they can be heirs to, are the clothes
and miserable property of the wretched malefactors.
Many other particulars of this outcast tribe are added
by authors on India, and they form in themselves no
weak proof of the unrelenting spirit of the Hindoo
code, that could thus doom a vast class of people, — a
fifth of the nation, — to unpitied and unmerited
wretchedness. An Indian, in his bigoted attach-
ment to the Metempsychosis, would fly to save the
life of a noxious reptile ; but, were a Chandelah fall-
ing down a precipice, he would not extend a hand
to save him from destruction. In such abomination
are the Chandelahs held on the Malabar side of India,
that if one chance to touch one of a superior tribe, he
draws his sabre and cuts him down on the spot.
Death itself, that last refuge of the unfortunate, offers
no comfort to him, affords no view of felicity or
reward. The gates of Jaggernath itself are shut
against him ; and he is driven, with equal disgrace,
from the society of men and the temples of the gods.

Such is the picture of priestcraft in India; such the
terrible spectacle of its effects, as they have existed
there from nearly the days of the Flood. Towards
this horrible and disgusting goal, it has laboured to
lead men in all countries and all ages; but here
alone, in the whole pagan world, it has succeeded to
the extent of its diabolical desires. We might add
numberless other features : the propitiatory sacri-
fice of cows, and trees of gold, prescribed by the

IN ALL AGES. 9$

avaricious Brahmins ; the immunities and privileges
with which they have surrounded themselves ; the
bloody rites they have laid on others, especially
among the Mahrattas, where, even at the present day,
human sacrifices are supposed to abound ; the tortures
they have induced the infatuated Yogees to inflict on
themselves — some going naked all their lives, suffer-
ing their hair and beard to grow till they cover their
whole bodies, — standing motionless, in the sun, in
the most painful attitudes, for years, till their arms
grow fast above their heads, and their nails pierce
through their clenched hands, — scorching themselves
over fires, — enclosing themselves in cages, — and
enacting other incredible horrors on themselves, for
the hope, inspired by the Brahmins, of attaining
everlasting felicity. But the subject is too revolting ;
I turn from it in indignation, and here close my
review of priestcraft in the pagan world.

94 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER IX.

THE HEBREWS.

We have now gone to and fro in the earth, and
have walked up and down in it ; not, like a certain
celebrated character, seeking whom we might devour,
but inquiring who have been devoured of priests ;
and everywhere we have made but one discovery ;
everywhere, in lands, however distant, and times,
however remote, a suffering people, and a proud and
imperious priesthood have been found. Sinbad the
sailor, in his multifarious and adventurous wander-
ings, once chanced to land in a desert island, in
which a strange creature, the Old Man of the Sea,
leapt upon his shoulders, and there, spite of all his
efforts to dislodge him, night and day, for a long
time, maintained his station. By day, he com-
pelled poor Sinbad, by a vigorous application of his
heels to his ribs, to go where he pleased, — beneath
the trees, whence he plucked fruit, or to the stream,
where he drank. By night, he still clung, even in
his sleep, with such sensitiveness to his neck, that it
was impossible to unseat him. At length a success-
ful stratagem presented itself to Sinbad. He found
a gourd, and squeezed into it the juice of the grape,
and set it in a certain place till it had fermented, and
became strong wine. This he put to the mouth of
the Old Man of the Sea, who drank it greedily,
became drunk, and fell asleep so soundly, that Sinbad

ad

IN ALL AGES. 95

unfolded his clinging legs from his breast, hurled him
from his shoulders, and, as he lay, crushed his head
with a stone. The adventure of Sinbad was awkward
enough, but that of poor human nature has been
infinitely worse. The Old Man of the Church,
from age to age, from land to land, has ridden on the
shoulders of humanity, and set at defiance all endea-
vours and all schemes to dislodge him. Unlike the
Old Man of the Sea, whose best beverage was a brook,
he is too well inured to strong drinks to be readily
overcome by them. He is one of those drinkers
called deep- stomached, and strong-headed; who sit
out all guests, dare and bear all spirituous potations,
and laugh, in invulnerable comfort, over the intoxica-
tion of the prostrated multitude. And what wonder?
His seat has ever been at the boards of princes. The
most sparkling cup has not passed him by untasted ;
the most fiery fluid has not daunted him. He has
received the vintages reserved solely for kings and
their favourites ; and though there was blood in it, he
has not blenched. The tears of misery dropped into
it, could not render it too bitter ; the bloody sweat-
drops of despair too poisonous : though the sound of
battle was in his ears, he ceased not to grasp the
flagon, — it was music, — though martyrs burned at
their stakes before him, and the very glow of their
fires came strongly upon him, he interrupted not his
carouse, but only cooled more gratefully his wine.
He has quaffed the juice of all vines ; presided at the
festivities of all nations ; poured libations to all gods :
in the wild orgies of the ancient German and British
forests he has revelled; in the midnight feast of skulls
he has pledged the savage and the cannibal ; the war-
feast of the wilderness, or the sacred banquet of the
refined Greek, alike found him a guest ; he has taken
the cup of pollution from the hand of the Babylonian

96 PRIESTCRAFT

harlot; and pledged, in the robes of the Gallic
Primate, renunciation of the Christian religion with
the Atheist. Lover of all royal fetes ; delighter in
the crimson-cushioned ease of all festivals in high
places ; soul of all jollity where the plunderers and
the deluders of man met to rejoice over their achiev-
ments ; inspirer of all choice schemes for the destruc-
tion of liberty and genuine knowledge when the
vintage of triumphant fraud ferments in his brain, till
the wine of God's wrath, in the shape of man's indig-
nation, confound him, — what shall move him from
his living throne ? From the days of the Flood to
those of William the Fourth of England he has ridden
on, exultingly, the everlasting incubus of the groaning
world.

We have perambulated the prime nations of pagan-
ism. It would have been easy to have extended our
researches further, to have swelled our details to
volumes ; but the object was only to give a sample
from the immense mass of ecclesiastical enormities.
We now come to the Holy Land ; and to the only
priesthood ever expressly ordained of heaven. It
might have been expected that this would prove a
splendid exception to the general character of the
order ; but alas ! — as the Jewish dispensation was
formed under the pressing necessity of guarding
against the idolatry of surrounding nations, and as
merely preparatory to a more spiritual one, so it
would seem as if one design of the Almighty had
been to shew how radically mischievous and prone to
evil an ecclesiastical order is, under any circum-
stances. The Jewish priests had this advantage
over all others whatever, that they were one tribe
of a great family, to whom, in sharing out the land
given to them of God, the altar was made their
sole inheritance, — the whole country being divided

!

IN ALL AGES. 97

amongst the other eleven tribes. But, notwithstand-
ing this fair title, so strongly did the universal spirit
of priestcraft work in them, that their history may
be comprised in a few sentences, and is one of the
most striking in the world. It began in Aaron with
idolatry, accompanied by most pitiful evasions ; it
shewed itself in its prime, in the sons of Eli, in
shameless peculation and lewdness; and it ended
in the crucifixion of Christ ! Such a beginning —
a middle — and an end — the world besides cannot
shew.

When we hear Aaron telling the people, in the face
of the most astounding miracles, — when the sound
of God's trumpets, which had shaken them to the
earth, in terror, had yet scarcely ceased to ring in
their ears, — when God himself, in a fiery majesty,
that made the mountain before them smoke and
tremble to its base, was at hand delivering to
Moses his eternal law — hear him telling them to
bring their golden ornaments, and he would make
a god to go before them ; and, in the next moment,
telling Moses that the people constrained him,
and he threw the gold into the fire, and "out
came this calf," as if by accident, — we are filled
with contempt for sacerdotal sycophancy and time-
serving.

When we read that "the sons of Eli were the
sons of Belial, — they knew not the Lord: — and the
priests' custom was, that when any man offered
sacrifice, the priests' servant came while the flesh
was in seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth
in his hand; and he strook it into the pan, or kettle,
or cauldron, or pot; — all that the flesh-hook brought
up, the priest took for himself. So they did in
Shiloh, to all the Israelites that came thither. Also,

H

98 PRIESTCRAFT

before they burnt the fat the priests' servant came,
and said to the man that sacrificed, ' give flesh to
roast for the priest, for he will not have sodden
flesh of thee, but raw.' And if any man said unto
him, ' let them not fail to burn the fat presently,
and then take as much as thy soul desireth;' and
then he would answer him, — ' Nay, but thou shalt
give it me now; and if not, I will take it by
force.' Therefore the sin of the young men was
very great before the Lord; for men abhorred the
offering of the Lord. Now Eli was very old,
and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel ;
and how they lay with the women that assembled
at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation."
When we read this, we are on fire with indignation.
But when we hear the chief priests crying out
against Christ — the hope, nay, the great object
of the formation of their nation, — the most meek,
and pure, and beneficent being that ever existed —
" away with this fellow ! he is not fit to live !
Away with him! crucify him!" we are thunder-
struck with astonishment! — we are silenced and
satisfied for ever, of the rooted and incurable ma-
lignancy of priestcraft. If God himself descended
from heaven, and charged a priestly hierarchy with
corruption, they would tell him to his face, that
he lied. They would assail him as a slanderer
and misrepresenter of the good, and raise, if pos-
sible, his own world in arms against him ! If the
fate of all other nations spoke to us in vain — that
of the Jews should be an eternal warning. The
very priests which God ordained, first corrupted,
and then destroyed the kingdom. They began
with idolatry, and ended with killing the Son
of God himself. Their victims, the Jews, still

IN ALL AGES. 99

walk before our eyes, a perpetual and fearful testi-
mony against them. It was the priests who
mainly contributed to annihilate them for ever as
a people, and to disperse them through all re-
gions, the objects of the contempt, the loathing,
and the pitiless persecution of all ages, and of
every race.

H2

100 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER X.

POPERY.

O that the free would stamp the impious name

Of Pope into the dust ! or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air
Erases, and the fiat sands close behind !
Ye the oracle have heard ;
Lift the victory-flashing-sword,
And cut the snaky knots of this foul Gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind

Into a mass, irrefragably firm,
The axes and the rods which awe mankind.
The sound has poison in it — 't is the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred ;
Disdain not then, at thine appointed term,
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

Shelley.

Christ appeared; — the career of Paganism was
checked; — the fate of Judaism was sealed. A cha-
racter and a religion were placed before the eyes of
men hitherto inconceivable in the beauty and phi-
lanthropy of their nature. Unlike all other founders
of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no
desire of dominance ; and his system, unlike all other
systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly bene-
ficent, inexpressibly pure, and, most marvellous of
all, went to break all bonds of body and soul; and
to cast down every temporal and every spiritual
tyranny. It was a system calculated for the whole

IN ALL AGES. 101

wide universe ; — adapted to embrace men of all
climes, all ages, all ranks of life, or intellect; for
the rich and for the poor; for the savage and the
civilized ; for the fool and the philosopher ; for man,
woman, and child ; — which, recognizing the grand
doctrine, that " God made of one blood all the nations
of the earth," represented the Almighty as the father,
and all men as brethren born to one universal love, —
to the same inalienable rights, — to the same eternal
hope. He himself was the living personification of
his principles. Demolishing the most inveterate
prejudices of men, by appearing a poor man amongst
the poor; by tearing from aristocratic pride and
priestly insolence their masks of most orthodox
assurance ; by proclaiming, that the truth which he
taught should make all men free ; by declaring that
the Gentiles lorded it over, and oppressed one another,
but that it should not be so with his followers ; by
pulling down with indignation spiritual pride in high
places, and calling the poor and afflicted, his brethren,
and the objects of his tenderest regard, — he laid the
foundations of civil and religious freedom, of mental
power growing out of unrestrained mental energies,
and of love and knowledge co-equal in extension
with the world. This perfect freedom of universal
man he guarded by leaving no decrees ; but merely
great, and everlasting principles, intelligible to the
mind and conscience of the whole human race ; and
on which, men in all countries, might found institu-
tions most consonant to their wants. By declaring
that " wherever two or three were met together in
his name, he would be in the midst of them," he cut
off, for ever, every claim, the most specious, of
priestly dominance ; and by expressing his un-
qualified and indignant abhorrence of every desire of
his disciples " to call down fire from heaven upon

102 PRIESTCRAFT

his enemies," or to forbid those to preach and work
miracles in his name, who did not immediately fol-
low him, and conform to their notions, he left to his
church a light more resplendent than that of the sun,
on the subject of non-interference with the sacred
liberty and prerogatives of conscience.

One would have thought that from this epoch, the
arm of priestcraft would have been broken ; that it
would never more have dared to raise its head ; — but
it is a principle of shameless avidity and audacity ;
and it is exactly from this time that we trace the
most amazing career of its delusions and atrocities,
down to the very day of our own existence.

Who is not familiar with the horrors and arrogant
assumptions of the papal church ? Scarcely had the
persecutions of the pagan emperors ceased, when the
Christian church became inundated with corruptions
and superstitions of every kind. Constantine em-
braced Christianity; and almost the whole world
embraced it nominally with him. From a conversion
of such a kind, the work of regal example and
popular interested hopes, what effects were to be
expected? The martial tyranny of ancient Rome,
which had subdued the world, was coming to an
end. The wealth of which a thousand states had
been stripped, had turned to poison in her bosom,
and brought upon the stern mistress of bloodshed
and tears that retribution, from which national rapine
and injustice never eventually escape. But as if the
ghost of departed despotism hovered over the Seven
Hills, and sought only a fresh body to arise in a
worse shape, a new tyranny commenced in the form
of priestcraft, ten times more terrible and hateful
than the old, — because it was one which sought to
subjugate not merely the persons of men, but to
extinguish knowledge; to crush into everlasting

IN ALL AGES. 103

childishness the human mind ; and to rule it, in its
fatuity, with mysteries and terrors. The times
favoured the attempt. With the civil power of the
Roman empire, science and literature were disappear-
ing. A licentious army controlled the destiny of a
debauched and effeminated people ; and the Gothic
and Hunnish nations, rushing in immense torrents
over the superannuated states of Europe, scattered,
for a time, desolation, poverty, and ignorance. At
this crisis, while it had to deal with hordes of rough
warriors, who, strong in body and boisterous in
manner, had yet minds not destitute of great energies,
and many traditional maxims of moral and judicial
excellence, but clothed in all the simple credulity of
children, — up rose the spirit of priestcraft in Rome,
and assumed all its ancient and inflated claims. As
if the devil, stricken with malice at the promulgation
of Christianity, which threatened to annihilate his
power, had watched the opportunity to inflict on it
the most fatal wound, and had found no instrument
so favourable to his purpose as a priest, — such a
glorious and signal triumph never yet was his from
the creation of the world. Had he devised a system
for himself, he could not have pitched upon one like
popery ; — a system which, pretending to be that of
Christ, suppressed the Bible, — extinguished know-
ledge,— locked up the human mind, — amused it with
the most ludicrous baubles, — and granted official
licenses to commit all species of crimes and impurity.
Satan himself became enthroned on the Seven Hills
in the habit of a priest, and grinned his broadest
delight amidst the public and universal reign of
ignorance, hypocrisy, venality, and lust.

As if the popes had studied the pagan hierarchies,
they brought into concentrated exercise all their
various engines of power, deception, and corruption.

104 PRIESTCRAFT

They could not, indeed, assert, as the pagan priest-
hood had done, that they were of a higher origin than
the rest of mankind ; and therefore entitled to sit as
kings, to choose all kings, and rule over all kings ;
for it was necessary to preserve some public alle-
giance to the doctrines of Christianity, — but they took
ground quite as effective. They declared them-
selves the authorized vicegerents of heaven ; making
Christ's words to Peter their charta — " On this rock
I will build my church," — hence asserting themselves
to be the only true church, though they never could
shew that St. Peter ever was at Rome at all. On
this ground, however — enough for the simple war-
riors of the time — they proceeded to rule over nations
and kings. On this ground they proclained the in-
fallibility of the pope and his conclave of cardinals,
and thus excluded all dissent. Their first act, having
once taken this station, was that which had been the
practice of priests in all countries, — to shut up the
true knowledge amongst themselves. As the priests
of Egypt and Greece inclosed it in mysteries, they
wrapt the simple truths of the gospel in mysteries too ;
as the Brahmins forbid any except their own order
to read the sacred Vedas, — they shut up the Bible, —
the very book given to enlighten the world; — the
very book which declared of its own contents, that
" they were so clear that he who ran might read
them ;" that they taught a way of life so perspicuous
that " the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not
err therein." This was the most daring and auda-
cious act the world had then seen ; but this act once
successful, the whole earth was in their power. The
people were ignorant ; they taught them what they
pleased. They delivered all sorts of ludicrous and
pernicious dogmas as scripture ; and who could con-
tradict them? So great became the ignorance of

IN ALL AGES. 105

even their own order, under this system, so com-
pletely became the Bible a strange book, that when,
in after ages, men began to inquire, and to expose their
delusions, a monk warned his audience to beware of
these heretics who had invented a new language,
called Greek, and had written in it a book called the
New Testament, full of the most damnable doctrines.
By every act of insinuation, intimidation, forgery,
and fraud, they not only raised themselves to the
rank of temporal princes, but lorded it over the
greatest kings with insolent impunity. The Bann,
which we have seen employed by the priests of
Odin in the north, they adopted, and made its terrors
felt throughout the whole Christian world. Was a
king refractory — did he refuse the pontifical demand
of money — had he an opinion of his own — a repug-
nance to comply with papal influence in his affairs ? —
the thunders of the Vatican were launched against
him ; his kingdom was laid under the bann ; all
people were forbidden, on pain of eternal damnation,
to trade with his subjects ; all churches were shut ;
the nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior ex-
ercise of its religion ; the altars were despoiled of their
ornaments ; the crosses, the reliques, the images, the
statues of the saints were laid on the ground; and,
as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute
them by its contact, the priests carefully covered
them up, even from their own approach and venera-
tion. The use of bells entirely ceased in all churches ;
the bells themselves were removed from the steeples,
and laid on the ground with the other sacred utensils.
Mass was celebrated with shut doors, and none but
the priests were admitted to the holy institution.
The clergy refused to marry, baptise, or bury ; the
dead were obliged to be cast into ditches, or lay pu-
trefying on the ground ; till the superstitious people,

106 PRIESTCRAFT

looking on their children who died without baptism
as gone to perdition, and those dead without burial
amid the ceremonies of the church and in consecrated
ground as seized on by the devil, rose in rebellious
fury and obliged the prince to submit and humble
himself before the proud priest of Rome.

Realms quake by turns : proud arbitress of grace,

The church, by mandate shadowing forth the power

She arrogates o'er heaven's eternal door,

Closes the gates of every sacred place.

Straight from the sun and tainted air's embrace

All sacred things are covered ; cheerful morn

Grows sad as night — no seemly garb is worn,

Nor is a face allowed to meet a face

With natural smile of greeting. Bells are dumb ;

Ditches are graves— funereal rites denied ;

And in the church-yard he must take his bride

Who dares be wedded ! Fancies thickly come

Into the pensive heart ill fortified,

And comfortless despairs the soul benumb.

Wordsworth.

But not merely kings and kingdoms were thus
circumstanced, every individual, every parish was
liable to be thus excommunicated by the neighbour-
ing priest. The man who offended one of these
powerful churchmen, however respected and influen-
tial in his own neighbourhood over night, might the
next morning behold the hearse drawn up to his
hall door, — a significant emblem that he was dead to
all civil and religious rights, and that if he valued his
life, now at the mercy of any vile assassin, he must
fly, and leave his family and his property to the same
tender regards which had thus outlawed himself.

The invention of monkery was a capital piece of
priestly ingenuity. By this means the whole world
became inundated with monks and friars,

Black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery.

ALL AGES. 107

banding army of vigilant forces was set up in
every kingdom : into every town and village they
entered ; in every house they became familiar spies,
ready to communicate the earliest symptoms of in-
subordination to the papal tyranny, ready at a signal
to carry terror into every region, and rivet faster the
chains of Rome. Like the frogs of Egypt, they
came up and covered the earth ; they crept into every
dwelling; into the very beds and kneading tubs,
sparing not those of the king himself — till the land
stank with them.

That they might have something to occupy the
imagination of the people equivalent to the numerous
idols, gorgeous temples, imposing ceremonies, and
licentious festivals of the heathen ; not only had they
paintings of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but
images of Christ, of his mother, and of a thousand
saints, who were exalted to be objects of a veneration
little to be distinguished from worship in the minds of
the deluded people. To these they prayed ; to these
they made offerings. Splendid churches were built,
and adorned with every fascination of statuary and
painting ; and carnivals, religious festivals, and pro-
cessions ordained without number, in which all the
lewdness and license of the pagan worship were
revived. Instead of the charms which the pagans
gave as a protection against evil, they gave relics —
bits of wood, hair, old teeth, and a thousand other
pieces of rubbish, which were pretended to be parts,
or to have been the property of, the saints, and were
endued with miraculous powers. Thus were men
made fast prisoners by ignorance, by the excitement
of their imaginations, and by objects on which to
indulge their credulity. But other engines equally
potent were set to work. Every principle of terror,
love, or shame in the human mind was appealed to.
Oral confession was invented. Every person was to

108 PRIESTCRAFT

confess his sins to the priest. Thus the priest was
put into possession of everything which could en-
slave a man to him. Who was so pure in life and
thought that, after having unbosomed himself to his
confessor — made him the depository of his most
secret thoughts, his weakest or worst actions, dare
any more to oppose or offend him ? But the chains
of shame and fear were not all ; those of hope were
added. The priest had not only power to hear sins,
but to pardon them. He could shut up in hell, or
let out ; he was not content with enslaving his fol-
lower in this world — he carried on his influence to
the next, and even invented a world, from the tor-
tures of which no man could escape without his
permission.

How all this could be built on the foundation of
Christianity might be wondered at; but it should
never be forgotten that the Bible was locked up,
and everything was directed to the acquisition of
power and gain. Everything was a source of gain.
Besides the direct tribute to the popedom, every shrine
had its offerings ; every confession, every prayer had
its price. Escape from purgatory and indulgence in
sin were regulated by a certain scale of payment. The
rich, the foolish, and the penitent were wheedled out
of their property to maintain the endless train of pope,
cardinals, priests, monks, nuns, confessors, and their
subordinates. By them abbeys, cathedrals, and
churches were endowed with ample lands; and every
one who incurred the censure of the church, added
also by fines to its funds. For a thousand years this
system was triumphant throughout Europe ;

Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee then,

In ominous eclipse ! A thousand years
Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den,

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.

Over a great part of it, it reigns still.

IN ALL AGES. 109

Millions of monks and secular priests, all for-
bidden to marry ; all pampered in luxurious ease
and abundance to voluptuousness, were let loose on
the female world as counsellors and confessors, with
secresy in one hand, and amplest power of absolution
from sin in the other; and the effect on domestic
purity may be readily imagined. So, smoothly ran
the course of popery for many a century : but when,
spite of all its efforts to the contrary, the human
mind again began to stir ; when knowledge again
revived ; and the secrets of the church were curiously
pried into ; then this terrible hierarchy, calling itself
Christian, let loose its vengeance. Fire and fagot,
chains and dungeons, exterminating wars, and in-
quisitions, those hells on earth, into which any man
might, at a moment's notice, be dragged from his
family, his fireside, or his bed, at the instigation of
malice, envy, cupidity, or holy suspicion, to tortures
and death. These were the tender mercies of the
papal priestcraft in the hour of its fear.

This is a brief sketch of what the popish church
was : we will now go on to give evidence of its
spirit and proceedings from the best authenticated
histories.

1. Of the means employed to obtain power.

2. Of the uses of that power.

3. Of the arrogance of the popish priesthood in
power.

4. Of their atrocities.

The evidence I shall select must necessarily be a
very small portion from the immense mass of the
deeds of this church ; for its history is such a con-
tinued tissue of ambition, cupidity, and vice in its
most hateful shapes, — dissensions, frauds, and blood-
shed, that nothing but the desire to draw from it a
great moral and political lesson, could induce me to
wade through iU

110 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XI.

POPERY CONTINUED.

They willeth to be king's peres,
And higher than the emperour ;
And some that vveren but pore freres
Now woollen waxe a warriour. — Chaucer.

But, Lorde, we lewed men knowen no God but thee, and
we, with thyne help and thy grace, forsaken Nabugodonosor and
hys lawes. For he, in his prowd estate, wole have all men onder
hym, and he nele be onder no man. He ondoeth thy lawes that
thou ordenest to be kept, and maketh hys awne lawes as hym
lyketh, and so he maketh hym kynge aboven all other kynges
of the erth ; and maketh men to worschupen hym as a God,
and thye gret sacryfice he hath ydone away.

The Ploweman's Praiek.

The earliest means which the bishops of Rome
employed to acquire power was, to assert their
supremacy over all other bishops of the Christian
church. This was not granted at once, but led to
many quarrels with their cotemporaries. The bishop
of Constantinople, in particular, contended with them
for the superiority ; the emperor Constantine having
shifted there the seat of civil government. These
odious squabbles I must necessarily pass over, and
confine myself entirely to the Romish church, as
being more intimately connected with our object. I
may state, once for all, that the patriarchs of Con-
stantinople maintained the contest with Rome through

IN ALL AGES. Ill

every age to the very time of the Reformation ; and
many disgraceful expositions of priestly wrath were
made on both sides. Of the Greek church, it will be
sufficient to say, that its prelates partook largely in
the arts and vices of priests in general, and plunged
that church into an abundance of ceremonious pueril-
ities, in which it remains to this day.

The attempts of the Romish pontiffs to grasp at
power were not crowned with instant success, either
over their fellow priests or cotemporary princes. It
was a work of time, of continual stratagem, and the
boldest acts of assumption. The full claims of papal
dominion over the Christian world in Europe were
not admitted, indeed, till the 11th century.

In the 4th century, Mosheim says, in the episcopal
order the bishop of Rome was the first in rank ; and
was distinguished by a sort of pre-eminence over all
other bishops. Prejudices, arising from a variety of
causes, contributed to establish this superiority ; but
it was chiefly owing to certain circumstances of
grandeur and opulence, by which mortals, for the
most part, form their ideas of pre-eminence and
dignity, and which they generally confound with the
reasons of a just and legal authority. The bishop
of Rome surpassed all his brethren in the magnifi-
cence and splendour of the church over which he
presided ; in the riches of his revenues and posses-
sions ; in the number and variety of his ministers ;
in his credit with the people ; and in his sumptuous
and splendid manner of living. These dazzling
marks of human power ; these ambiguous proofs of
true greatness and felicity, had such an influence on
the minds of the multitude, that the see of Rome
became, in this century, a most seducing object of
sacerdotal ambition. Hence it happened, that when
a new pontiff was to be elected by the suffrages of the

112

PRIESTCRAFT

presbyters and the people, the city of Rome was
generally agitated with dissensions, tumults, and
cabals, whose consequences were often deplorable and
fatal. One of these, in 366, gave rise to a civil war,
which was carried on within the city of Rome with
the utmost barbarity and fury, and produced the most
cruel massacres and depopulations.

The picture of the church which Milton makes
Michael foreshew to Adam was speedily realized.

The Spirit
Poured first on his apostles, whom he sends
To evangelize the nations, then on all
Baptized, shall them with wond'rous gifts endue
To speak all tongues, and do all miracles,
As did their Lord before them. Thus they win
Great numbers of each nation, to receive
With joy the tidings brought from Heaven: at length,
Their ministry performed, and race well run,
Their doctrine, and their story written left,
They die ; but in their room, as they forewarn,
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn
Of lucre and ambition : and the truth
With superstitions and traditions taint,
Left only in those written records pure,
Though not but by the Spirit understood.
Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names,
Places and titles, and with these to join
Secular power ; though feigning still t» act
By spiritual ; to themselves appropriating
The Spirit of God, promised alike and given
To all believers ; and, from that pretence
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force
On ev'ry conscience ; laws which none shall find
Left them enrolled, or what the Spirit within
Shall on the heart engrave. What will they then
But force the Spirit of Grace itself, and bind
His consort Liberty 1 What but unbuild
His living temple, built by Faith to stand,
Their own faith, not another's 1 For, on earth,
Who against faith and conscience can be heard

IN ALL AGES. 113

Infallible 1 Yet many will presume :

Whence heavy persecution shall arise

On all, who in the worship persevere

Of spirit and truth ; the rest, far greater part,

Will deem, in outward rites and specious forms,

Religion satisfied : truth shall retire

Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works of faith

Rarely be found : so shall the world go on,

To good malignant, to bad men benign :

Under her own weight groaning: till the day

Appear of respiration to the just,

And vengeance to the wicked.

In this century many of those steps were laid by
which the bishops of Rome afterwards mounted to
the summit of ecclesiastical power and despotism.
These steps were laid, partly by the imprudence of
the emperors, partly by the dexterity of the Roman
prelates. In the fifth century the declining power of
the emperors left the pontiff at liberty to exercise
authority almost without control ; and the irruptions
of the barbarians contributed to strengthen this
authority; for, perceiving the subserviency of the
multitude to the bishop, they resolved to secure his
interest and influence by loading him with benefits
and honours.

This Was the second mode by which they acquired
power, — flattering the surrounding kings ; serving
them occasionally, without regard to honour or prin-
ciple, or, as they grew stronger, subduing them by
menaces to their will. In the seventh century the
Roman pontiffs used all sorts of methods to maintain
and enlarge the authority and pre-eminence they had
acquired by a grant from the most odious tyrant that
ever disgraced the annals of history. Boniface III.
engaged Phocas, that abominable despot, who waded
to the imperial throne through the blood of the
Emperor Mauritius, to take from the Patriarch of
Constantinople the title of ^Ecumenical, or Universal

114 PRIESTCRAFT.

Bishop, and confer it upon him. In the next century
a still more glaring stretch of assumed priestly power
was exhibited. We observe, says Mosheim, in the
French annals, the following remarkable and shocking
instance of the enormous power that was, at this time,
invested in the Roman pontiff. Pepin was mayor
of the palace to Childeric III. ; and, in exercise of
that high office, was possessed, in reality, of the
royal power ; but, not content with this, he formed
the design of dethroning his sovereign. He therefore
sent ambassadors to Rome to inquire, whether the
divine law did not permit a valiant and warlike people to
dethrone a pusillanimous and indolent monarch, who was
incapable of performing any of the functions of royalty,
and to substitute in his place one more ivorthy to rule ?
Zachary had need of the aid of Pepin ; and his
answer was all that could be wished. When this
decision of the pope was published in France, Pepin
stripped poor Childeric of his royalty ; and stepped
immediately into his throne. This decision was
solemnly confirmed by his successor, Stephen II.,
who went to France ; and being under the necessity
of soliciting Pepin's aid against the Lombards,
dissolved the act of allegiance -and fidelity the usurper
had sworn to Childeric ; and, to render his title as
firm as possible, anointed and crowned him, his wife,
and two sons.

This compliance of the Roman pontiffs' proved an
abundant source of opulence and credit to them.
Pepin marched into Italy, subdued all the pope's
enemies, and put him in possession of the Grecian
provinces in Italy. The Exarch of Ravenna, when
Pepin retired, threw off the yoke, and besieged Rome ;
but Pepin returned, and compelled him again to
deliver up the exarchate of Ravenna and Pentapolis
to the pontiff; and thus raised the Bishop of Rome

IN ALL AGES. 115

to the rank of a temporal prince. After Pepin's
death a new attack was made upon the papal terri-
tory, by Dideric, king of the Lombards. The then
pope, Adrian I., fled to Charlemagne, the son of
Pepin ; who, having need of the pope's sanction to
seize on the Eastern Roman Empire, hastened to
Rome ; repelled the pope's foes, and in consideration
of his sanction of his ambitious views, added fresh
territories to the papal see. Thus, by the most
shameless and unprincipled trafficking between the
pretended Vicar of Christ, and these bold bad kings,
did the popes acquire royalty and dominion, and
gave to treason and regal robbery the assumed sanc-
tion of heaven ! Once placed by kings on temporal
thrones, these audacious priests soon shewed their
royal cotemporaries what companions they had ad-
mitted amongst them. Not contented with what
royal robbery had given them, they speedily assailed
their princely neighbours ; sought to hurl them from
their throne, and stirred up some of the most bloody
wars on record.

The notorious Hildebrand, a Tuscan monk, of
mean origin, having arrived at the pontificate, styled
himself Gregory VII., and displayed to the world the
full measure of the priestly spirit. He was a man,
says Mosheim, of uncommon genius, whose ambition
in forming the most arduous projects, was equalled
by his dexterity in bringing them into execution.
Sagacious, crafty, and intrepid, he suffered nothing
to escape his penetration, defeat his stratagems, or
daunt his courage. Haughty and arrogant beyond
all measure ; obstinate, impetuous, and intractable ;
he looked up to the summit of universal empire with
a wistful eye ; and laboured up the steep ascent with
uninterrupted ardour, and invincible perseverance.
Void of all principle, destitute of every virtuous

i 2

116 PRIESTCRAFT

feeling ; he suffered little restraint in his audacioi
pursuits from the dictates of religion, or the remon-
strances of conscience. Not content to enlarge the
jurisdiction and augment the opulence of the see of
Rome, he strove to render the universal church sub-
ject to its despotism ; to dissolve the jurisdiction of
kings and princes over the various orders of the
clergy ; and exclude them from the management of
the revenues of the church. Nay, he would sub-
mit to his power the kings, emperors, and princes
themselves ; and render their dominions tributary to
Rome. Such were the pious and apostolic exploits
that employed Gregory VII. during his whole life ;
and which rendered his pontificate a continual scene
of tumult and bloodshed. His conduct to France
was worthy of the country which had first given
princely power to the Roman priests, and of himself.
It was just that the realm which had put power into
such hands for such purposes as it did, should be
bitten by a fiendish ingratitude. Hildebrand de-
clared France tributary to the see of Rome ; and
ordered his legates to demand yearly, in the most
solemn manner, the payment of that tribute. Nothing
can be more insolent than the language in which the
priest addressed himself to Philip of France, recom-
mending an humble and obliging carriage, from this
consideration, that both his kingdom and his soul were
under the dominion of St. Peter, i. e., his vicar, the
pope, who had power to bind and to loose him both on
earth and in heaven. Nothing escaped his all-grasp-
ing ambition. He drew up an oath for the emperor
of the Romans, from whom he demanded a profession
of subjection and obedience. He pretended Saxony
was a feudal tenure, having been a pious offering of
Charlemagne to the see of Rome. He claimed
Spain : maintained it had been the property of the

IN ALL AGES. 117

apostolic see from the earliest times of the church ;
and the Spanish princes paid him tribute. He made
the like attempts on England : but found in William
the Conqueror a different subject. William granted
his Peter-pence, but refused to do homage for his
crown. He wrote circular letters to the German
princes, to Geysa, King of Hungary, and Sweno,
King of Denmark, demanding submission. The son
of Demetrius, Czar of the Russias, went to Rome, in
consequence of his letters, to obtain the kingdom
which would devolve to him on his father's death, as
a gift from St. Peter, after professing subjection and
allegiance to the prince of the Apostles, — a gift
readily granted by the officious pope, who was ex-
tremely liberal of what did not belong to him. De-
metrius Suinimer, Duke of Croatia and Dalmatia,
was raised to royalty by him in the year 1076 ; and
solemnly proclaimed King at Salona, on condition
that he should pay annually two hundred pieces of
gold to St. Peter, at the Easter festival. Boleslaus
II., King of Poland, having killed Stanislaus, Bishop
of Cracow, Gregory not only excommunicated him,
but hurled him from his throne ; dissolved the oath
of allegiance which his subjects had taken ; and
forbid, by an express, imperious edict, the nobles
and clergy of Poland from electing a new king
without his leave.

In Italy his success was transcendant. Matilda,
the daughter of Boniface Duke of Tuscany, the most
powerful and opulent princess of that country, found
that neither ambition nor years had extinguished the
tender passion in the heart of Gregory, — and as a
testimony of the familiarity which existed between
them, settled all her possessions in Italy and else-
where upon the church of Rome ; an act, however,
strongly resisted by her successor, and the cause of
many struggles and much bloodshed.

118 PRIESTCRAFT

To complete his despotic power over every Chris-
tian prince, this odious priest claimed the sole right
of installing bishops in their office. It had been the
custom of every prince to appoint the bishops of his
own land. At the death of any one of these, the ring
and crosier, the insignia of his office, were sent to the
monarch, and were by him delivered to the one he
appointed. This right Gregory claimed as the sole
prerogative of the pope ; thus designing to make the
whole church dependent on him, and entirely sub-
servient to all the papal views — powerful instruments
in the pontifical hands against both prince and people,
the world over. The resistance this claim met with,
led to terrible wars ; and we shall have occasion to
mention that with the Emperor of Germany, and his
humiliation before the haughty priest, under the he*
of priestly arrogance.

Thus did this race of most shameless and audacious
men, while they called themselves the pastors of the
flock of the meek and tender Christ, daringly and
recklessly advance to a pitch of the most amazing,
enduring, and universal despotism over the loftiest
and most powerful monarchs. But to display effect-
ively the full character of the Roman pontiffs, we
must write volumes on their deeds in the thirteentl
and fourteenth centuries, which were filled with thei
arrogant demands from, and assumptions over, the
sovereign powers of Europe ; for, at once, Conrad
Duke of Suabia, and Frederick of Austria, were
actually beheaded at Naples by order of Clement IV.;
and another emperor, Henry IV., is supposed to have
been poisoned by a wafer, in taking the sacrament
from a Dominican monk. Their excommunications, —
their wars, — their vindictive quarrels with kings, and
with each other, — these things swell the numerous
volumes of ecclesiastical history. Nothing, indeed,

IN ALL AGES. 119

is so revolting in all the annals of the world as the
malignant bitterness of these vicars of Christ against
each other upon different occasions. Their unbridled
ambition led more than once to the election of two
popes at the same time, and to the consequent tear-
ing asunder of all Europe with their petty factions.

The example of the pontiffs was not lost on the
bishops, abbots, and inferior clergy. These, even in
the time of Charlemagne, had actually obtained for
their tenants and their possessions an immunity from
the jurisdiction of the counts and other magistrates ;
as also from taxes and imposts of all kinds. But
in this century they carried their pretensions still
further, — aimed at the civil government of the cities
and territories in which they exercised a spiritual
dominion ; and even aspired to the honours and
authority of dukes, marquises, and counts of the
empire. The nobles were for ever resisting, in their
respective domains, the assumptions of the clergy in
matters of jurisdiction and other affairs. These,
therefore, seized the opportunity which was offered
them by the superstition of the times, to obtain from
the kings these, the ancient rights of the nobles ; and,
as the influence of the bishops over the people was
greater than that of the nobility, the kings, to secure
the services of so powerful a priesthood, generally-
granted their requests. Thus they became bishops and
abbots clothed with titles and dignities so foreign to
their spiritual office, — reverend dukes, marquises,
counts, and viscounts !

It was not however by these means only that they
sought dominion over the world. They had a thou-
sand arts to rivet their power into the souls of the
people. Councils were one of them. As if the
sacerdotal name and inculcations were not influential
enough, they sought, by collecting together all the

120

PRIESTCRAFT

dignities of the church into one place, to invest them
with a more awful character ; and to render the enact-
ments of these priestly congresses everlasting and
indissoluhle laws. These enactments were such as —
the worship of images, decreed in the council of Nice
787 ; the holding of a festival to the virgin mother,
instituted by the council of Mentz in the 9th century;
taking the cup of the sacrament from the laity ; and
a declaration of the lawfulness of breaking the most
solemn engagements made to heretics, by the council
of Constance in the fifteenth century, with a thousand
other despotic or absurd decrees against all sects,
and all freedom of opinion ; and for the institution
of exclusive rites and festivals.

IN ALL AGES. 121

CHAPTER XII.

POPERY CONTINUED.

(Chastity speaks J.

I blame the Emperour Constantine,
That I am put to sic mine,

And baniest from the kirk :
For since he maid the Paip an king,
In Rome, I could get na lodging :

But headlong in the dark.
But ladie Sensualitie,
Since then, has guidit this cuntrie,

And monie of the rest :
And now scho reulis all this land
And has decreed, at her command,

That I should be supprest.
Sir David Lyndsay's Satyre of the Three Estaites.

The establishment of monkery was another means
of building up a perfect despotism by the papists.
These orders orginated in the third century, and,
multiplying through successive ages, became, not
only various in name, but countless in number;
spreading in swarms throughout every part of Chris-
tendom ; propagating superstition, lewdness, and
ignorance ; acting as spies and supporters of the
papal dominion ; fixing themselves in every fertile
and pleasant spot ; awing, or wheedling the rich and
foolish out of their lands and possessions ; and, at
length, bursting out into the most bitter quarrels
amongst themselves, became like so many rabid dogs
before the public eye ; and hastened, in no small
degree, the downfall of the church which had set

122 PRIESTCRAFT

as the

them up for its own support. They, as well
secular clergy, were forbidden to marry ; and hence
flowed a torrent of corruption throughout the world.
In the third century they formed, says Mosheim,
connexions with those women who had made vows
of chastity ; and it was an ordinary thing for an eccle-
siastic to admit one of these fair saints to his bed,
but still under the most solemn declarations that
nothing passed contrary to the rules of chastity and
virtue ! These holy concubines were called Mulieres
Subintroductce.

Yet more, — round many a Convent's blazing fire

Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun ;

There Venus sits disguised like a Nun, —

While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,

Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher

Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run

Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won

An instant kiss of masterful desire —

To stay the precious waste : through every brain

The domination of the sprightly juice

Spreads high conceits, to madding Fancy dear,

Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse

Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,

Whose votive burden is — " Our kingdom's here !"

Wordsworth.

These fellows too, especially the Mendicants, wan-
dering over Europe, were the most active venders of
relics, and propagators of every superstitious notion
and rite. Their licentiousness, so early as the fifth
century, was become proverbial ; and they are said to
have excited thus early, in various places, the most
dreadful tumults and seditions. In the next century
they multiplied so prodigiously in the east, that whole
armies might have been raised of them without any
sensible diminution of their numbers. In the western
provinces also they were held in the highest venera-
tion, and both monks and nuns swarmed. In Great

i

IN ALL AGES. 123

Britain, an abbot, Cougal, persuaded an innumerable
number of persons to abandon the affairs, duties, and
obligations of life, and to shut themselves up in idle-
ness, or to wander about in holy mischief. In the
seventh century, the contagion spread still more
enormously. Heads of families, striving to surpass
each other's zeal for the advancement of monkery,
shut up their children in convents, and devoted them
to a solitary life as the highest felicity. Abandoned
profligates, terrified by their guilty consciences, were
comforted with the delusive hopes of pardon, by
leaving their fortune to monastic societies. Multi-
tudes deprived their children of their rich lands and
patrimonies, to confer them on the monks, whose
prayers were to render the Deity propitious. In the
following century the mania had reached such a
height, that emperors and kings conferred whole pro-
vinces, cities, and titles of honour on these creatures.
In the succeeding ages, so much did their licentious-
ness and ignorance increase, that in the tenth century
few of the monks knew the rules of their own orders
which they had sworn to obey, but lived in the most
luxurious and prodigal magnificence with their concu-
bines. The fourteenth century was distracted with
the contentions of the various orders of the monks,
who had grown so full of wealth, luxury, pride and
all evil passions, that they not only turned their
wrath against each other, but against the popes
themselves. Their bitter and presumptuous bicker-
ings filled this century with the most strange and
hateful scenes.

We must pass over an infinite quantity of the
monkish history, and content ourselves with a few
remarks of Mosheim, on their state in the sixteenth
century, at the time when their crimes and excesses
were bringing on them the Reformation. The pro-

124 PRIESTCRAFT

digious swarms of monks, says this historian, that
overran Europe, were justly considered as burdens to
society; and, nevertheless, such was the genius of
the age, an age that was just emerging from the
thickest gloom of ignorance, and was suspended, as it
were, in a dubious situation between darkness and
light, that these monastic drones would have remained
undisturbed, had they taken the least pains to pre-
serve any remains even of the external air of decency
and religion, which distinguished them in former
times. But the Benedictine, and other monkish
fraternities, who were invested with the privilege of
possessing certain lands and revenues, broke through
all restraint, and made the worst possible use of their
opulence ; and, forgetful of the gravity of their cha-
racter, and of the laws of their order, rushed headlong
into the shameless practice of vice, in all its various
kinds and degrees. On the other hand, the Men-
dicant orders, and especially the Dominicans and
Franciscans, lost their credit in a different way : for
their rustic impudence, their ridiculous superstitions,
their ignorance, cruelty, and brutish manners, tended
to alienate from them the minds of the people. They
had the most barbarous aversion to the arts and
sciences, and expressed a like abhorrence of certain
learned men, who being eagerly desirous of enlighten-
ing the age, attacked their barbarism in both their
discourse and their writings ; — this was the case with
Reuchlerius, Erasmus, and others.

The Dominicans possessed the greatest power and
credit of all monks; — they presided in church and
state ; were confessors to the great, and judges of the
horrible Inquisition — circumstances which put most
of the European princes under their control ; but, not
content with these means of influence, they resorted
to the most infamous frauds, to enslave the ignorance

IN ALL AGES. 125

of the age. One of the most singular instances of
this sort, is that recorded by Reuchat, in his Histoire
de la Reformation en Suisse ; by Hottinger, and by
Bishop Burnett, in his Travels on the Continent. So
remarkable is it, that I must give it as compendi-
ously as I can.

" The stratagem was in consequence of a rivalry
between the Dominicans and Franciscans, and more
especially of their controversy concerning the im-
maculate conception of the Virgin Mary. The latter
maintained that she was born without the blemish of
original sin : the former asserted the contrary. The
doctrine of the Franciscans, in an age of superstition,
could not but be popular ; and hence the Dominicans
lost ground daily. To obviate this they resolved, at
a Chapter held at Vimpsen in 1504, to have recourse
to fictitious visions, in which the people at that time
had an easy faith; and they determined to make
Bern the scene of their operations. A lay-brother of
the name of Jetzer, an extremely simple fellow, was
fixed on as the instrument of these delusions. One
of the four Dominicans who had undertaken the man-
agement of this plot, conveyed himself secretly into
Jetzer's cell, and about midnight appeared to him in
a horrid figure, surrounded with howling dogs, and
seeming to blow fire from his nostrils by means of a
box of combustibles which he held near his mouth.
He approached Jetzer's bed, and told him he was the
ghost of a Dominican who had been killed at Paris,
as a judgment of heaven for laying aside his monastic
habit ; that he was condemned to purgatory for this
crime, and could only be rescued from his horrible
torments by his means. This story, accompanied
with horrid cries and bowlings, frightened poor Jetzer
out of what little wits he had, and engaged him to do
all in his power to rescue the Dominican from his

126 PRIESTCRAFT

torment. The impostor then told him that nothing
but the discipline of the whip applied for eight days
by the whole monastery, and Jetzer's lying prostrate
on the chapel floor in the form of a cross during
mass, could effect this. He added, these mortifica
tions would secure Jetzer the peculiar favour of the
Blessed Virgin ; and told him he would appear to
him again, with two other spirits.

Morning was no sooner come, than Jetzer related
these particulars to the whole convent; who enjoined
him to undergo all that he was commanded, and
promised to bear their part. The deluded simpleton
obeyed, and was admired as a saint by the multitude
who crowded about the convent ; while the four friars
who managed the imposture, magnified, in the most
pompous manner, the miracle of this apparition in
their sermons and conversations. Night after nigli
the apparition was renewed, with the addition of twc
other impostors, dressed like devils; and Jetzer's
faith was augmented, by hearing from the spectre al"
the secret of his own life and thoughts, which th
impostors had got from his confessor. In this anc
subsequent scenes, whose enormities we must pas
over, the impostor talked much to Jetzer of th
Dominican order ; which, he said, was peculiarly dear
to the Blessed Virgin ; that the Blessed Virgin knew
herself to be born in original sin; that the doctors who
taught the contrary, were in purgatory; that she
abhorred the Franciscans for making her equal to her
Son ; and that the town of Bern would be destroye
for harbouring such plagues within it.

In one of these apparitions, Jetzer, silly as he was
discovered the similarity of the spectre's voice to that
of the prior — who it actually was — yet he did not
suspect the fraud. The prior appeared in various
disguises ; sometimes as St. Barbaro, sometimes a;

IN ALL AGES. 127

St. Bernard, and, at length, as the Virgin herself,
clothed in the habit which adorned her statue at fes-
tivals. The little images that on these days are set
on the altar, were used for angels, which being tied to
a cord which passed through a pully over Jetzer's
head, rose up and down, and danced about the pre-
tended virgin, to increase the delusion. The virgin
addressed a long discourse to Jetzer; gave him a
marvellous wafer, — a host which turned, in a moment,
from white to red ; and, after various visits, in which
the greatest enormities were acted, the virgin-prior
told Jetzer she would give him the most undoubted
proof of her Son's love, by imprinting on him the five
wounds that pierced Jesus on the cross, as she had
done before to St. Lucia and St. Catherine. Ac-
cordingly she took his hand, and thrust a large nail
through it, which threw the poor .dupe into the
greatest torment. The next night, this masculine
virgin brought, as she pretended, some of the linen
in which Christ had been buried, to soften the wound ;
and gave Jetzer a soporific draught, composed of the
blood of an unbaptized child, some incense, con-
secrated salt, quicksilver, the hairs of a child's
eye-brows, with some poisonous and stupifying
ingredients, mingled by the prior with magic cere-
monies, and a solemn dedication of himself to the
devil, in hope of his aid. This draught threw the
poor wretch into a lethargy, during which the other
four wounds were imprinted on his body. When he
awoke and discovered them, he fell into unspeakable
joy, and believed himself a representation of Christ
in the various parts of his passion. He was, in this
state, exposed to the admiring multitude on the
principal altar of the convent, to the great mortifica-
tion of the Franciscans. The Dominicans gave him
some other draughts, and threw him into convulsions,

128 PRIESTCRAFT

which were followed by a voice conveyed through a
pipe into the mouths of two images, one of Mary, the
other of the child Jesus ; the former of which had
tears painted upon its cheeks in a lively manner.
The little Jesus asked his mothei why she wept ; she
answered, for the impious manner in which the Fran-
ciscans attributed to her the honour that was due to
him.

The apparitions, false prodigies, and abominable
stratagems were repeated every night : and were, at
length, so grossly overacted, that even the simple
Jetzer saw through them, and almost killed the priest.
Lest this discovery should spoil all, they thought it
best to own the whole to Jetzer, and prevail on him
to join in the imposture ; engaging him, by the most
seducing promises of opulence and glory, to carry on
the delusion. Jetzer appeared to be persuaded, but
lest he should not be faithful and secret, they at-
tempted to poison him ; and it was alone owing to
the vigour of his constitution that they did not suc-
ceed. Once they gave him a rich spiced loaf, which,
growing green in a day or two, he threw a piece to a
wolf's whelps, kept in the monastery, and it killed
them immediately. Again they poisoned the host,
or consecrated wafer; but he vomited it up. In
short, the most detestable means to destroy him and
his evidence were employed; but he succeeded in
getting out of the convent, and throwing himself into
the hands of the magistrates. The whole thus came
to be sifted out ; commissioners were sent from Rome
to examine the affair; and the four friars were
solemnly degraded, and burnt alive on the last day
of May, 1509. Jetzer died soon after. Had he been
destroyed before this exposure, this execrable plot
would have been handed down to posterity as a
stupendous miracle."

IN ALL AGES. 129

Rome could hasten to punish such vile frauds when
they were made public, but she was not the less ready
to practise them herself in the most daring manner,
as I shall proceed to shew : but before leaving this
strange case of Jetzer it may be remarked, that auda-
cious and even incredible as it may appear to many, it
rests upon too good authority to be doubted. Hun-
dreds, indeed, of similar instances might be brought,
for the whole history of the Romish church is that of
fraud and delusion : but we need not go out of our
own country for similar transactions. Who does not
call to mind the affair of the Maid of Kent, enacted in
the reign of Henry the Eighth at the very moment
lie was aiming a death-blow at popery, and in the face
of a people whose eyes were opening to the acts and
impostures of the papal sorceress ? The case may be
seen at large in Hume. The substance of it is this :
some monks, and one Masters, the vicar of Alding-
ton, in Kent, got hold of a girl of the name of Eliza-
beth Barton, who was subject to convulsive fits, and
induced her to enter into a system of deception on the
public mind. They gave out that she was inspired,
and in these fits delivered the words of the Virgin
Mary. Having once imposed, not merely on the
common people, but engaged the Archbishop of
Canterbury and other dignitaries of the church in the
affair, they proceeded to promulgate heavenly mes-
sages against the reforming principles, and even
threatened destruction to the king if he proceeded in
them. The friars, throughout the country, counte-
nanced the delusion, and propagated it with all their
zeal and might. But they had a man to deal with
very inauspicious for their purpose. He arrested the
holy maid and her accomplices, brought them before
the Star Chamber, and soon terrified them into a full
confession of their imposture. A most scandalous

K

130 PRIESTCRAFT

scene was laid open. Her principal accomplices,
Masters the vicar, aftid Dr. Bocking, a canon of Can-
terbury, were found to have a private entrance to her
chamber, and to have led a most licentious life with
her. The girl and six of her coadjutors were executed;
and the Bishop of Rochester and others were con-
demned for misprision of treason, because they had
not revealed her criminal speeches, and were thrown
into prison. This was in England in the sixteenth
century, and is a good specimen of the spirit of
monkery : but another of ka more menacing kind was
soon given. Their " Diana of the Ephesians" was
in danger ; the king threatened not only to destroy
popery, but to root out the monasteries ; and it was
not in the nature of priests and monks to resign their
ill-gotten booty without a struggle. They set up
the standard of rebellion. A monk, the Prior of
Barlings in Lincolnshire, was at the head of it. He
marched with 20,000 men at his heels, till he fell
into the king's hands. But another army from the
north was not so easily scattered. This, which con-
sisted of 40,000 men, called its enterprise the Pil-
grimage of Grace. Some priests marched before in
the habits of their order, carrying crosses in their
hands ; in their banners was woven a crucifix,
with the representation of the chalice, and the five
wounds of Christ. They wore on their sleeve an
emblem of the five wounds, with the name of Jesus
wrought in the middle : and all took an oath that
they had no motive but love to God, care of the king's
person and issue ; and a desire to purify the nobility,
drive base-born persons from about the king, and
restore the church, and suppress heresy. With those
pretensions they marched from place to place ; took
Hull, York, and other towns ; excited great dis-
turbance and clamour, and were not dispersed but

IN ALL AGES. 131

with great difficulty. This was a trial of force where
fraud could not succeed of itself, according to the
established papal policy; but fraud was alone one of
its most successful means of acquiring power, and
in order to contemplate this instrument more clearly
we must go back again to an earlier age.

To advance their power the popes did not shrink
from the most audacious forgery. Such was that
of the notorious decretals of Isidore ; documents
purporting to be written by the early pontiffs, and
containing grants of the Holy See from Constantine ;
of the supremacy of the pope, and other privileges ;
all proved by the clearest evidence to be the most
barefaced inventions.

Frauds were multiplied abundantly to besot and
blind the popular spirit. Monks, bishops, warriors,
and men of the worst characters, nay of neither cha-
racter nor real existence, as St. George and his
dragon, were canonized, made into saints, and their
lives written in a manner most calculated to beguile
the ignorance of the times. Shrines were set up,
and churches dedicated to them, where people might
pray for their aid. Dreams and miracles were pre-
tended to throw light on the places of their burial ;
solemn processions were set on foot to discover and
take them up ; and the most miraculous powers attri-
buted to them. Bones were buried, and afterwards
pretended to be found, and declared by heaven to
belong to saints and martyrs : and bits of bone, hairs,
fragments of filthy rags, and other vile things ; chips
of the true cross, etc., were sold at enormous prices,
as capable of working cures and effecting blessings of
all kinds. The milk of the Virgin, and the blood of
St. Januarius, which liquified on the day of his festi-
val, were particularly famous in Italy. In England,
at the dissolution of the monasteries, many very

k 2

132 PRIESTCRAFT

curious ones were found. The parings of St. Ed-
mond's toes ; some of the coals that roasted St. Law-
rence ; the girdle of the Virgin, shewn in eleven
several places ; the belt of St. Thomas of Lancaster,
an infallible cure for the headach ; part of St. Thomas
of Canterbury's shirt; but chief of all, the blood of
Christ brought from Jerusalem, and shewn for many
ages at Hales in Gloucestershire. This sacred blood
was not visible to any one in mortal sin ; but in doing
sufficient good work, i. e., paying money enough, it
revealed itself. It was preserved in a phial, one side
of which was transparent, the other opaque. Into
this the monks every week put a fresh supply of the
blood of a duck ; and, on any pilgrim arriving, the dark
side was shewn him, which threw him into such con-
sternation for his sinful state, that he generally pur-
chased masses and made offerings, till his money or
fortune began to fail ; when the charitable monks
turned the clear side towards him ; he beheld the
blood, and went away happy in his regenerate con-
dition.

Rumours were spread of prodigies to be seen in
certain places ; robbers were converted into martyrs ;
tombs falsely given out to be those of saints ; and
many monks travelled from place to place, not only
selling, with matchless impudence, their fictitious
relics, but deluding the eyes of the people with ludi-
crous combats with spirits and genii. Ambrose, in his
disputes with the Arians, produced men possessed
with devils, who, upon the approach of the relics of
Gervasius and Protatius, were obliged to cry out that
the doctrine of the Council of Nice on the Trinity was
true, and that of the Arians false. One of the pre-
cious maxims of the fourth century was, " that it was
an act of virtue to deceive and lie when it could pro-
mote the interest of the church." — a maxim never

I

IN ALL AGES. 133

afterwards forgotten. Pilgrimages to distant holy
places were hit upon as a strong means to employ
the minds and enslave the affections of numbers ;
houses, as that of the Virgin at Loretto, were even
said to descend from heaven to receive the sacred en-
thusiasm of men ; and Crusades, those preposterous
and tremendous wars, whose details are filled with the
most exquisite miseries, and most abhorrent crimes
and licentiousness, were promoted, as potent means of
employing the power and exhausting the treasures
of kings. In those crusades, millions of miserable
wretches, men, women, and children — the low, the
ignorant, the idle, the dissolute — after wandering from
kingdom to kingdom, the wonder and horror of the
inhabitants, were consumed ; and from those crusades
in return, loads of relics were poured out of Syria
over all Europe.

All kinds of ceremonies and festivals were im-
ported from paganism for the same end. Auricular
Confession was invented, by which the clergy be-
came the keepers of the consciences of the whole world ;
and the spiritual tyrants, not merely of the weak and
the wicked, but of every one capable of a sense of
shame or of fear. Indulgences were granted for the
commission of crimes, and past sins pardoned for mo-
ney and gifts of lands : — and Purgatory ! that most
subtle and profitable invention of priestcraft, was
contrived, to give the church power over both living
and dead. Thus was the religion of Christ com-
pletely disfigured by pagan ceremonies, and made to
sanction all wickedness for the sake of gain. The
very celebration of worship was ordered to be
in Latin ; an unknown tongue to the great mass of
those who heard it, so that they were reduced not
only to feed on the chaff and garbage of priestly
fables, but in the very temple of God himself to fill

134

ritlESTCRAFT

themselves with mere wind and empty sounds. The
hread was taken from the children and given to the
dogs. Mass was invented — that splendid piece of
mummery, which, filling the eyes while it enlightened
not the mind, was at once an instrument of keeping
the people in ignorance ; of fixing them fast by the
imagination to the hollow trunk of formality ; and of
filling the pockets of the priests, by whom it was
never performed without a fee ; — for the souls of the
dead paid more or less according to the imagined
need. For many a great sinner masses were esta-
blished for ever ; and whole lordships were given to
the church, to support chapels and chantries for the
peace of souls that were already beyond rescue, or
need of redemption. Every prayer and paternoster
had its price. Thus was heaven, earth, and all
therein turned into a source of beastly gain. The
rage for dominion in the popes, says Mosheim, was
accompanied by a most insatiable avarice. All the
provinces of Europe were drained to enrich those
spiritual tyrants, who were perpetually gaping after
new accessions of wealth.

Another mode of influence was, constituting churches
asylums for robbers and murderers ; another, that
dark one of excommunication; another, the borrowing
of ordeals from the pagans ; another, the right of
patronage ; and, lastly, the terrors of the inqui-
sition.

Such were the multiplied means employed for the
monopoly of all the wealth, power, and honour of the
universe by this infamous race of vampyres ; and we
have but too many instances of their determination to
quench and keep down knowledge in their treatment
of Bacon, Petre d'Abano, Arnold of Villa Nuova, and
Galileo ; to say nothing of the reformers, whom they
regarded as their natural enemies, and destroyed

IN ALL AGES. 135

without mercy. Mankind owes to the Roman church
an everlasting reward of indignation for its attempts
to crush into imbecility the human mind, and to
insult it in its weakness with the most pitiful baubles
and puerilities.

And for what end were all these outrages on huma-
nity,— these mockeries of every thing great, — these
blasphemies of every thing holy, perpetrated ? That
they might wallow, undisturbed, in the deepest mire
of vice and sensuality, and heap upon those they had
deluded and stripped of property, of liberty and of
mind, insult and derision. Let every man who hesi-
tates to set his hand to the destruction of state reli-
gions, look on this picture of all enormities that can
disgrace our nature, and reflect that such is the
inevitable tendency of all priestcraft. Is it said we
see nothing so bad now ? And why ? Because man
has got the upper hand of his tyrant, and keeps him
in awe, — not because the nature of priestcraft is
altered ; and yet, let us turn but our eyes to Catholic
countries, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the scene is
lamentable ; and even in our own country, where
free institutions check presumption, and the press
terrifies many a monster from the light of day, — we
behold things which make our hearts throb with indig-
nation.

I had intended to give some specimens of papal
lust, gluttony, and other infamous habits, but I turn
from them in disgust ; for those who seek them,
ecclesiastical history is full. I shall only devote a
few pages to Romish arrogance and atrocities, and
then dismiss this Harlot of the Seven Hills.

136

PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XIII.

POPISH ARROGANCE AND ATROCITIES.

Unless to Peter's Chair the viewless wind
Must come and ask permission where to blow,
What further empire would it have? — for now
A ghostly Domination, unconfined
As that by dreaming bards to love assigned,
Sits there in sober truth — to raise the low,
Perplex the wise, the strong to overthrow —
Through earth and heaven to bind and to unbind .'
Resist — the thunder quails thee! — crouch — rebuff
Shall be thy recompense ! from land to land
The ancient thrones of Christendom are stuff
For occupation of a magic wand,
And 't is the Pope that wields it; — whether rough
Or smooth his front, our world is in his hand !

Wordsworth.

We have seen, in the progress of this volume, that
arrogance and atrocity are prominent and imperish-
able features in the priestly character ; and it might
be imagined that instances had been given in various
ages and nations which could not be surpassed : but
if we consider the fierce and audacious exhibition of
those qualities in the Romish priests ; the greatness
and extent of the kingdoms over which they exercised
them ; and the mild and unassuming nature of the
religion they professed to be the teachers of, it must
be confessed that the world has no similar examples
to present. The papal church seemed actuated by a

IN ALL AGES. 137

perfect furor and madness of intolerance, haughty
dictation, and insolent cruelty. In the 12th cen-
tury the pope proclaimed himself Lord of the Uni-
verse ; and that neither prince nor bishop possessed
any power but what was derived from him ; in the
14th he, on one occasion, at a great dinner, ordered
Dandolo, the Venetian ambassador, to be chained
under the table like a dog. In 1155 the pope
insisted on the celebrated emperor, Frederick Bar-
barossa, holding his stirrup, at the emperor's own
coronation ; a proposal at first rejected with disdain,
and which led to contests of a most momentous
nature. Some writers affirm that his successor, hav-
ing compelled the emperor to submit, trod upon his
neck, and obliged him to kiss his foot while the
proud prelate repeated, from Psalm xci. — " Thou
shalt tread upon the lion and the adder ; the young
lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot."
Our great poet receives it as fact.

Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head,

To Caesar's successor the pontiff spake ;

'* Ere I absolve thee, stoop ! that on thy neck

Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread."

Then he who to the altar had been led,

He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check,

He who had held the Soldan at his beck,

Stooped, of all glory disinherited,

And even the common dignity of man !

Amazement strikes the crowd.

Wordsworth.

In the eighth century the humiliating ceremony
of kissing the pope's toe was introduced. In 1077
the famous pope, Gregory VII., compelled the em-
peror, Henry IV., to do penance for his resistance to
his monstrous claims. The unhappy monarch passed
the Alps in a severe winter ; waited on the pontiff at
Canusium, where, unmindful of his dignity, he stood

138 PRIESTCRAFT

three days at the entrance of the fortress (within
which the detestable pope was feasting with his
mistress, the Countess Matilda), with his head and
feet bare, and no other raiment than a wretched
piece of woollen cloth. On the fourth day he was
admitted to the pontiff, who scarcely deigned to grant
him the absolution he sought, and absolutely refused
to restore him to his throne till after further delay
and further indignities. The humiliation of holding
the stirrup was also forced on the emperor Louis II. ;
and every reader is familiar with the arrogant spectacle
of pope Alexander riding into the French camp, with
the French monarch on the one side, and the English
on the other, walking at his stirrup. We have
already seen the boundless assumption and insolence
of the popes in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries ; how they thundered their anathemas against
kings and emperors , dethroned and beheaded as they
pleased ; made bloody wars on them to wrest from
them their power, and even set up new kingdoms.

Their clergy naturally caught the same spirit, and
carried into every region and every house the same
intolerable haughtiness. The papal legates came to
the courts of the greatest princes, with an odious
arrogance that fully represented that of their master.
From the history of the European nations, we might
select the most astonishing instances of legates,
cardinals, and bishops, before whom both monarch
and people trembled; but I shall only select one or
two from our own annals. Who can ever forget the
notorious Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canter-
bury ? one of the most perfect personifications of
priestly insolence and audacity. This wretch, who
had been raised to his high dignity by his royal
master, and loaded with every honour, having once
gained all that his ambition could hope from the in-

IN ALL AGES. 139

dulgent monarch, became one of the most captious
and troublesome villains that ever disturbed, with
priestly pride, the peace of kingdoms. Henry, by an
act of the Council of Clarendon, endeavoured to bring
into some tolerable degree of restraint, the power and
license of the clergy. Becket most arrogantly refused
all obedience to the king's wishes; and backed by
Alexander III., the same pope who had so humiliated
Frederick Barbarossa, commenced a course of annoy-
ance to the mild-spirited king, which, even at this
distance of time, makes one's blood boil with in-
dignation to read. The monarch, aroused by it,
compelled Becket to retire to France. Hereupon the
pope and the French king interposed ; and endeavoured
so far to pacify the offended sovereign, as to allow
Becket to return to England, and resume his office.
But who that knows any thing of priests could hope
that he would be touched with any sense of shame, or
gratitude towards his forgiving prince ? He became
only more inveterately rebellious, and carried his
insolence so far, that four gentlemen who witnessed
with indignation the vexations heaped on their so-
vereign, hastened to Canterbury, and inflicted on the
haughty and sanctimonious wretch, deserved and
exemplary death.

But if Becket was dead, the haughty pope was
alive, and soon compelled poor Henry to the most
humiliating degradations ; — to go, bare-headed and
bare-footed, on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and do
penance at the canonized shrine of the now sainted
Becket !

A similar fate was that of poor king John, — the
weak and wicked Lack-land. He ventured to oppose
the pope's power, who had proceeded to set aside the
election of John de Grey to the see of Canterbury,
and to appoint, spite of the king and the nation,

140 PRIESTCRAFT

Stephen Langton, primate of England. John as-
sumed a high tone ; and threatened to extinguish the
papal power in England. What was the consequence ?
Innocent laid John's kingdom under the bann. A
stop was put to divine worship ; the churches were
shut in every parish; all the sacraments, except
baptism, were superseded; the dead were buried in
the high ways, without any sacred rites. Several,
however, of the better and more learned clergy,
indignantly refused obedience to this detestable inter-
dict; and the pope accordingly proceeded to farther
measures. In 1209, he excommunicated John; and
two years afterwards, issued a bull, absolving all his
subjects from their allegiance, and ordering all per-
sons to avoid him. The next year, the enraged pope
assembled a council of cardinals and bishops, deposed
John, declared the throne of England vacant; and
ordered the king of France to take it, and add it to
his own. The French king was ready enough to
do this; he assembled an army; — John assembled
another to oppose him ; and had he been a monarch
of an enlightened mind and steady fortitude, England
would have been rescued from popish thraldom, and
the reformation accelerated by some ages. But
Pandolph, the pope's legate, arriving in England, so
succeeded by his artful representations of the power
of France, and the defection of John's own subjects,
that his courage broke down, and he submitted to the
most abject humiliations. He promised, among other
things, that he would submit himself entirely to the
judgment of the pope ; that he would acknowledge
Langton for primate ; that he would restore all the
exiled clergy and laity who had been banished on
account of the contest ; make them full restitution of
their goods, and compensation for all damages, and
instantly consign eight thousand pounds in part of

IN ALL AGES. 141

payment ; and that any one outlawed, or imprisoned
for his adherence to the pope, should be instantly
received to grace and favour. He did homage to the
pope ; resigned his crown to him ; and again received
it from him as a gift ; and bound himself to pay seven
hundred marks annually for. England, and three
hundred for Ireland : and consented that any of his
successors who refused to pay it, should forfeit all
right to the throne. All this was transacted in a
public assembly in the house of the Templars at
Dover, — for the popish priests always took care that
refractory kings should suffer the most public and
excruciating degradations ; and the legate, after
having kept the crown and sceptre five whole days,
returned them, as by special favour of the pope.
John, however, presented a sum of money in token of
his dependence, which the proud prelate trod under
his feet.

In reviewing these things, one is ready to exclaim,
can it really be England in which such scenes have
been exhibited, and suffered by Englishmen 1 Thanks
to the progress of knowledge, which has crushed the
hydra-head of such monstrous priestcraft !

The atrocities of popery were on a par with its
arrogance. In every age it has been ready with the
fire and the fagot; and every one who dared to
dissent from its opinions, was put to death with the
cruellest brutality. We have already adverted to its
treatment of learned men, whose discoveries tended to
shake its power over the public mind. Galileo's forced
renunciation of what he knew to be the truth — the
verity of the Copernican system — has been a popular
theme in every age.

They bore

His chained limbs to a dreary tower,

In the midst of a city vast and wide.

For he, they said, from his mind had bent

142 PRIESTCRAFT

Against their gods keen blasphemy,

For which, though his soul must roasted be

In hell's red lakes immortally,

Yet even on earth must he abide

The vengeance of their slaves ! a trial

I think men call it.

Shelley.

He succumbed in the trial — he recanted the tru
openly; yet as he rose from his knees before his
stupid judges, he whispered to a friend — e pur si
muovef it does move though ! Yes ! it moved ! — the
world moved, and that in more respects than one ; and
popery is become a wreck and a scorn, and man and
knowledge have triumphed.

Fear not, that the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith :
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.

Shelley.

The reformers became their victims in most in-
stances ; and if Wycliffe escaped, his remains received
the implacable resentment of the sacerdotal spirit.
They were dug up; burnt, and scattered, on the
waters of the neighbouring river, whence they floated
to the ocean, and became the seeds of life and re-
sistance to papal despotism in myriads of minds in
all regions. A list of all the victims who have
perished by papal cruelty would amount to some
millions. Even in England, in the reign of Queen
Mary, when this horrid religion was restored for a
short space, two hundred and seventy persons were
brought to the stake, besides those who were punished
by fines, imprisonments, and confiscations. Amongst
those who suffered by fire were five bishops, twenty-

jth

IN ALL AGES. 143

one clergymen, eight lay gentlemen, eighty-four
tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, servants and
labourers, fifty-five women, and four children. This
persevering cruelty appears astonishing, yet is much
inferior to what has been practised in other countries.
A great author, Father Paul, computes that in the
Netherlands alone, from the time that the edict of
Charles V. was promulgated against the reformers,
there had been fifty thousand persons hanged, be-
headed, buried alive, or burnt on account of religion ;
and in France a great number.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew will remain to
the end of time in characters of infamy on the history
of France. This horrid carnage, which was an
attempt to exterminate the protestants, commenced
at Paris on the 24th of August, 1572, by the secret
orders of Charles IX, at the instigation of the Queen
Dowager of Medici. The Queen of Navarre was
poisoned by order of the court. About daybreak, says
Thuanus, upon the toll of the great bell of the church
of St.' Germain, the butchery began. Coligni, admiral
of France, was basely murdered in his own house ;
and then thrown out of the windows, to gratify the
malice of the Duke of Guise. His head was cut
off, and sent to the king and queen-mother ; and his
body, after a thousand indignities offered to it, hung
up by the feet on a gibbet. After this the murderers
ravaged the whole city, and butchered, in three days,
10,000 lords, gentlemen, and people of all ranks.
A horrible scene, when the very streets and passages
resounded with the noise of those who met together
for murder and plunder ; the groans of the dying, the
shrieks of those about to be butchered, were every-
where heard. The bodies of the slain were thrown
out of the windows ; the courts and chambers filled
with them : the dead bodies of others dragged along

144 PRIESTCRAFT

the streets ; their blood running in torrents down the
channels to the river : an innumerable multitude of
men, women, and children involved in one common
destruction ; and the gates of the king's palace be-
smeared with their blood.

From Paris, the massacre spread through the pro-
vinces, throughout nearly the whole kingdom. In
Meaux they threw above two hundred into gaol ;
ill-treated and then killed a great number of women ;
plundered the houses of the protestants, and then
exercised their fury on their prisoners ; calling them
out, one by one, and butchering them as sheep for
the market. The bodies of some were flung into the
Maine, and others into ditches. The same cruelties
were practised at Orleans, Angers, Troyes, Bourges,
La Charity, and especially Lyons, where they in-
humanly destroyed above eight hundred protestants ;
children, hanging on their parents' necks ; parents
embracing their children ; putting ropes round the
necks of some, dragging them through the streets,
and flinging them half dead into the river. The
soldiers and very executioners refused, says a de-
tailed account of this transaction, in the first volume
of the Harleian Miscellany, to partake in this hellish
carnage, and the butchers, and lowest populace were
admitted to the prisons, where they chopped off the
hands, feet, and noses of the captives, and derided
their agonies, as they mangled them.

When the news arrived at Rome, where the letters
of the pope's legate, read in assembly of the cardi-
nals, gave assurance that all this was done by com-
mand of the king, the joy was excessive ; and it
was instantly decreed that the pope and cardinals
should march to the church of St. Mark in solemn
procession, and return God thanks for so great a
blessing conferred on the see of Rome and the

IN ALL AGES. 145

Christian world ! That high mass should be cele-
brated, the pope and all his cardinals attending ; a
jubilee should be published throughout the Christian
world. The cannon of St. Angelo were fired, and
the city illuminated as for a most splendid victory.

But even this was exceeded by the unrestrained'
vengeance of the great Roman Anti- Christ against
the poor Vaudois, a simple people of Piedmont,
who from the Apostolic age had preserved the purity
of the faith, and refused to bow to the swollen pride
and worse than pagan idolatry of Rome. These
primitive people were, from age to age, persecuted
with fire and sword; their own prince was stirred
up and compelled to become against them, the
butcher of the Roman pontiff. They were hunted
from their houses ; suffocated in caves with flaming
straw by hundreds ; their wives and children massa-
cred without mercy : — but in vain ! They continued
through all ; and still continue, as may be seen by
Mr. Gillies' most interesting account of his visit to
them ; and their sufferings have been immortalized
in the fiery burst of Milton's indignation.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not ; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, who rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blcod and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

Milton did not content himself with thus venting
his indignation; he made such representations to

L

146 PRIESTCRAFT

Cromwell of the situation of these suffering people
that the Protector zealously interceded for them with
the Duke of Savoy; but with too little effect.

In the same spirit the papal tyrant quenched the
literature of the Troubadours, which exerted a faint,
but pleasant twilight gleam in the 13th century; and
was highly influential in the revival of poetry, by
exciting the spirit of Petrarch, and through him of
Chaucer, and the following English poets. This
light, Rome put out by exterminating the Provencal
people in a war, so singular and expressive of the
nature of priestcraft, when full grown, that I shall
give a brief account of it, principally from Sismondi's
Literature of the South of Europe, with a few par-
ticulars from Milner's venerable History of the Church
of Christ.

The excessive corruption of the clergy had furnished
a subject for the satirical powers of the Troubadours.
The cupidity, the dissimulation, and the baseness of
that body, had rendered them odious both to the
nobility and the people. The priests and the monks
incessantly employed themselves in despoiling the
sick, the widowed, and the fatherless, and indeed all
whom age, or weakness, or misfortune placed within
their grasp; while they squandered in debauchery
and drunkenness, the money which they extorted by
the most shameful artifices. If God, said Raymond
de Castelnau, will the black monks to be unrivalled
in their good eating and their amours, and the white
monks in their lying bulls, and the Templars and
Hospitallers in pride, and the canons in usury, I hold
St. Peter and St. Andrew to have been egregious
fools for suffering so much for the sake of God, since
all these people also are to be saved. The gentry
had imbibed such contempt for the clergy, that they
would not educate their children to the priesthood,

IN ALL AGES. 147

but gave their livings to their servants and bailiffs.
The persecutions of Theodora in 845, and of Basil in
867 and 886, after having effected the destruction of
more than a hundred thousand victims, compelled the
remainder to seek refuge, some amongst the Mussel-
mans, and others amongst the Bulgarians. Once
out of the pale of persecution, their faith, of a purer
and simpler kind, made rapid progress. In Languedoc
and Lombardy the name of Paterins was given them,
on account of the sufferings to which they were
exposed wherever the papal power extended; and
they afterwards received the name of Albigenses, from
the numbers that inhabited the diocese of Alby.

Missionaries were dispatched into Higher Langue-
doc in 1147 and 1181, to convert these heretics; but
with little success. Every day the reformed opinions
gained ground, and Bertrand de Saissac, the tutor of
the young Viscount of Beziers, himself adopted them.
At length Innocent III. resolving to destroy these
sectaries, whom he had exterminated in Italy, sent,
in 1198, two Cistercian monks with the authority of
legates a latere, to discover and bring them to justice.
The monks, ambitious of extending their already
unprecedented powers, not contented with merely
attacking the heretics, quarrelled with all the regular
clergy, who had attempted to. soften their proceedings.
They suspended the Archbishop of Narbonne, and
the Bishop of Beziers ; and degraded the Bishops of
Toulouse and of Veviers. Pierre de Castelnau, the
most eager of the legates, accused Raymond of
Toulouse of protecting the heretics, because that
prince, being of a mild disposition, refused to lend
himself to the destruction of his subjects. The anger
of the priest, at length led him to excommunicate the
count, and place his estates under interdict : and he
proceeded to such irritating insolence, that one of the

l 2

148 PRIESTCRAFT

count's followers, in his indignation, pursued him to
the banks of the Rhone, and killed him. This
crowned the misfortunes of Languedoc. It gave
Innocent a pretext to proceed to bloodshed, and he
took instant advantage of it. He addressed a letter
to the king of France; to all the princes and most
powerful barons, as well as to the metropolitan bishops,
exhorting them to vengeance, and to the extirpation
of heresy. All the indulgences and pardons, which
were usually granted to the crusaders, were promised
to those who exterminated these unbelievers. Three
hundred thousand pilgrims, induced by the united
motives of avarice and superstition, filled the country
of the Albigenses with carnage and confusion for a
number of years. The reader who is not versed in
history of this kind, can scarcely conceive the scenes
of baseness, perfidy, barbarity, indecency, and hypo-
crisy, over which Innocent presided; and which were
conducted partly by his legates, and partly by the
infamous Simon de Montford. Raymond VI. ter-
rified at this storm, submitted to every thing required
of him; but Raymond Roger, Viscount of Beziers,
indignantly refused to give up the cause of his
subjects. He encouraged them to resist; shut him-
self up in Carcassone, and gave Beziers to the care of
his lieutenants. Beziers was taken by assault in
July, 1209, and fifteen thousand inhabitants, accord-
to the Cistercian monk, or sixty thousand according
to others, were put to the sword. This Cistercian
monk was asked before the city was taken, how he
could separate the heretics from the catholics ? he
replied, " Kill all; God will know his own!"

The brave young Viscount of Beziers did not
shrink ; he still defended Carcassone. Peter II. of
Arragon attempted to make terms for him with his
monkish besiegers, but all that they would grant was,

IN ALL AGES. 149

to allow thirteen of the inhabitants, including the
count, to leave the city ; the remainder were reserved
for a butchery like that of Beziers. The viscount
declared he would be flayed alive rather than submit
to such terms. He was, at length, betrayed ; poi-
soned in prison ; four hundred of his people burnt,
and fifty hanged. Simon de Montford, the most
ferocious monster of all the crusaders, received from
the legate, the viscount's title ; and devastated the
whole of the south of France with the most frightful
wars. They who escaped from the sacking of the
town were sacrificed by the fagot. From 1209 to
1229, nothing was seen but massacres and tortures.
Religion was overthrown : knowledge extinguished ;
and humanity trodden under foot. In the midst of
these horrors, the ancient house of Toulouse became
extinct.

Connected with this melancholy history, is one of
the last horrid instruments of Papal tyranny which
remains to be mentioned — The Inquisition. These
monks, Arnold Ranier and Pierre Castelnau, were
followed by the notorious Spaniard, Dominic, and
others, who, proceeding to seek out and execute
heretics, gained the name of Inquisitors. On their
return from this infernal expedition, the Popes were
so sensible of their services, that they established
similar tribunals in different places. In time, Italy,
Spain, and other countries, were cursed with these
hellish institutions ; and their history is one of the
most awful horror that can affright the human soul.
But these, and the Jesuits, demand a separate notice.

150 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XIV.

JESUITS AND INQUISITORS.

The land in which I lived, by a fell bane
Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
And stabled in our homes — until the chain
Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide
That blasting curse, men had no shame — all vied
In evil, slave and despot ; fear with lust,
Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,
Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.
Revolt of Islam.
But onward moved the melancholy train

In their false creeds, in fiery pangs to die.
This was the solemn sacrifice of Spain —

Heaven's offering from the land of chivalry !

The Forest Sanctuary.

We have passed rapidly through strange scenes of
priestly wickedness and bloodshed, — bnt of all the
agents of the devil which were ever spawned in the
black dens of that earthly pandemonium, the Papal
Church, none can compare with the Jesuits and
Inquisitors.

The Jesuits arose in the latter days of popery.
Their doctrines were those of popery grown to
thorough ripeness. They seemed created to shew to
what lengths that system could be carried, and to
crown it, in conjunction with their fellow demons of

IN ALL AGES. 151

the Inquisition, with that full measure of popular
indignation which should hasten its great " immedi-
cable wound" from the hand of Luther. The Jesuits
took up the favourite dogmas of the Papal Church :
that the end sanctifies the means — that evil may be
done that good may come of it — and pushed them to
that degree which causes the good and the simple to
stand in astonishment at the daring acts and adroit
casuistry of " bold bad men." All oaths, all obli-
gations, all morality, all religion, according to their
creed, were to be adopted or set aside, just as it
suited the object they had in view. They might
cheat and lie, steal and kill, all for righteousness'
sake. They embodied in practice the pithy maxims
of Hudibras.

That saints may claim a dispensation

To swear and forswear on occasion,

I doubt not but it will appear

With pregnant light : the point is clear.

Oaths are but words, and words but wind ;

Too feeble instruments to bind.

But saints whom oaths and vows oblige,

Know little of their privilege.

For if the devil, to serve his turn,

Can tell truth ; why the saints should scorn

When it serves theirs to swear and lie,

I think there 's little reason why.

Else he has a greater power than they,

Which 't were impiety to say.

They thought with him,

The Public Faith, which every one
Is bound to observe, is kept by none.
And if that go for nothing, why
Should Private Faith have such a tie?
Oaths were not purposed more than law,
To keep the good and just in awe,
But to confine the bad and sinful,
Like mortal cattle in a pinfold.

1^2 PRIESTCRAFT

Then why should we ourselves abridge
And curtail our own privilege ?
Quakers that, like dark lanterns bear
Their light within them, will not swear.
Their gospel is an accidence
By which they construe conscience.
And hold no sin so deeply red
As that of breaking Priscian's head —
The head and founder of their order,
That stirring hats held worse than murder.
These thinking they 're obliged to troth
In swearing, will not take an oath :
Like mules, who if they 've not their will
To keep their own pace, stand stock still,
But they are weak, and little know
What freeborn consciences may do.

'T is the temptation of the devil
That makes all human actions evil.
For saints may do the same things by
The spirit in sincerity,
Which other men are tempted to,
And at the devil's instance do.
And yet the actions be contrary,
Just as the saints and wicked vary.
For as on land there is no beast
But in some fish at sea 's expressed,
So in the wicked there 's no vice
Of which the saints have not a spice :
And yet that thing that 's pious in
The one, in 't other is a sin.
Is 't not ridiculous and nonsense
A saint should be a slave to conscience !

These were their precious tenets — the quintessence
of the wisdom of this world, to which that of the
children of light is unprofitable foolishness. Their
founder, Ignatius Loyala, a Spaniard — an ominous
name when connected with religion, — was a most acute
and happy genius in his way. He saw the advan-
tages which the Popes had derived from their accom-
modating ecclesiastical logic, and he conceived the
felicitous idea of creating a sort of second series of

IN ALL AGES. 153

Popes, taught and enlightened by the old series. He
adopted their facile code of morals, and he even out-
went them in the exquisite finesse of his policy.
The head of this system was to take the name of
General of the Order ; his emissaries were to go forth
into all kingdoms ; to insinuate themselves into all
cities, houses, and secret hearts of the people. They
were to adopt all shapes, to follow all circumstances ;
to wear an outside of peculiar mildness, and an inner-
man of subtle observance ; to have the exterior of
the dove — the interior of the serpent. With all this
sequacity, flexibility and disguise, they succeeded
wonderfully. What, indeed, could resist them, when
they came in all shapes, and with all pretences ; — at
the first glimpse of discovery of their real designs,
or of popular indignation, ready to eat up their
words, and swear that they were anything but
what they really were? But when they found
themselves in any degree of strength, — when they
were desirous of carrying some point that com-
pliance and duplicity could not carry, — who so
dogged and insolent as they 1 They bearded people,
magistrates, kings, — the pope himself, with the most
immoveable assurance. The popes, who regarded
them as active maintainers of ignorance and obe-
dience, were desirous to tolerate them as much as
possible. But they often found it a severe task for
their patience. They were in the condition of a man
who has tamed a serpent or a lion ; they might soothe
the beast by coaxing, perhaps, but were every mo-
ment in danger of rousing its ferocity, and even of
falling before its rage. When struck at, they stood
and hissed, and fought with true snaky pertinacity ;
but if they saw actual destruction coming, they
suddenly disappeared, only to raise their hydra
heads in a thousand other places. Expelled from

154 PRIESTCRAFT

states in their own character of Jesuits, they came
back in all sorts of disguises ; and, instead of open
enemies, the people and their governors had to
encounter the secret influence of their poison, and
their stings which struck in the dark. They insi-
nuated themselves into colleges and schools under
false colours, till they could seize upon them and
convert them into engines of their designs. They
became confessors, especially of women, that they
might learn all the secrets of their husbands ; of
kings and ministers, to learn those of states : all the
intelligence thus gathered was regularly transmitted
to the General from every kingdom, so that he and his
counsellors knew the condition and intentions of all
nations ; and, at a moment's notice, his creatures
were ready to seize upon universities, churches,
governments, or whatever they desired. They en-
tered into trade, and were scattered all over the
world, wearing no outward appearance but that of
merchants ; yet keeping up a secret correspondence
with one another, and with their General, and trans-
mitting intelligence and wealth from all quarters of
the globe. They were not satisfied with exercising
their arts over the Christian world ; they proceeded
into all pagan countries as missionaries, and sought
to bring the savages of Asia, Africa, and America
under their dominion. They evidently had formed
the bold design of acquiring the spiritual and political
sovereignty of the world : but, with all their subtlety —
their ambition and their unprincipled grasping at
power so alarmed and disgusted all people, that their
history is a continual alternation of their growing into
numbers and strength, and of their expulsion from
almost every kingdom that can be named. England,
France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Italy,
the East and the West Indies, America, North and

IN ALL AGES. 155

South, in all these countries their arts were re-
peatedly tried, and they were as repeatedly expelled
with ignominy and vengeance.

The rapidity with which they spread themselves, is
shewn by the following statement from the memorial
presented by the University of Paris to the king in
1724: — "In 1540, when they presented their peti-
tions to Paul III., they only appeared in the number
of ten. In 1543 they were not more than twenty-
four. In 1545 they had only ten houses; but, in
1549 they had two provinces : one in Spain, and the
other in Portugal, and twenty-two houses ; and at the
death of Ignatius, in 1556, they had twelve large
provinces. In 1608, Ribadeneira reckoned twenty-
nine provinces, and two vice-provinces ; twenty-one
houses of profession ; two hundred and ninety-three
colleges ; thirty-three houses of probation ; ninety-
three other residences, and ten thousand five hundred
and eighty-one Jesuits. In the catalogue printed at
Rome in 1629, are found thirty-five provinces, two
vice-provinces, thirty-three houses of profession,
five hundred and seventy-eight colleges, forty-eight
houses of probation, eighty-eight seminaries, one
hundred and sixty residences, one hundred and six
missions, and, in all, seventeen thousand six hundred
and fifty-five Jesuits, of whom seven thousand eight
hundred and seventy were priests. At last, according
to the calculation of Father Jouvency, they had, in
1710, twenty-four houses of profession, fifty-nine
houses of probation, three hundred and forty resi-
dences, six hundred and twelve colleges, of which
above eighty were in France, two hundred missions,
one hundred and fifty-seven seminaries and boarding-
houses, and nineteen thousand nine hundred and
ninety-eight Jesuits.

On their mercantile concerns, M. Martin, governor

156 PRIESTCRAFT

of Pondicherry, observes, " It is certain that, next to
the Dutch, the Jesuits carry on the greatest and most
productive commerce in India. Their trade surpasses
even that of the English, as well as that of the Por-
tuguese, who established them in India. There may
possibly, indeed, be some Jesuits who go there from
pure religious motives ; but they are very few, and it is
not such as those who know the grand secret of the
company. Some among them are Jesuits secularized,
who do not appear to be such, because they never
wear the habit ; which is the reason why at Surat,
Agra, Goa, and every where else, they are taken for
real merchants of the countries whose names they
bear : for it is certain that there are some of all
nations, even of America and Turkey, and of every
other which can be useful and necessary to the
society. These disguised Jesuits are intriguing every-
where. The secret intercourse which is preserved
among them instructs them mutually in the merchan-
dize which they ought to buy and sell, and with what
nation they can most advantageously trade ; so that
these masked Jesuits make an immense profit of the
society, to which they are alone responsible, through
the medium of those Jesuits who traverse the world
in the habit of St. Ignatius, and enjoy the confidence,
know the secrets, and act under the orders of the
heads of Europe. These Jesuits, disguised and dis-
persed over the whole earth, and who know each
other by signs, like the Freemasons, invariably act
upon one system. They send merchandize to other
disguised Jesuits, who, having it thus at first hand,
make a considerable profit of it for the society. This
traffic is, however, very injurious to France. I have
often written respecting it to the East India Com-
pany trading here ; and I have received express
orders from it (under Louis XIV.) to concede and

IN ALL AGES. 157

advance to these fathers whatever they might require
of me. The Jesuit Tachard alone owes that com-
pany, at this moment, above four hundred and fifty
thousand livres. Those Jesuits who, like Tachard,
pass and repass between this quarter and Europe, are
ambulatory directors and receivers of the bank and
of the trade."

" In the Antilles," says Coudrette, " Lavalette, the
Jesuit, has half the worth of the property for whose
conveyance to France he undertakes. In Portugal
the Jesuits had vessels employed exclusively in their
service, which facts are established by the process of
Cardinal Saldanha. All the accounts of travellers in
the East Indies speak in the same way, with astonish-
ment, of the extent of their commerce. In Europe,
and even in France, they have banks in the most
commercial cities, such as Marseilles, Paris, Genoa,
and Rome. In addition to this, they publicly sell
drugs in their houses ; and, in order to their sanction
in this, they procured from Pope Gregory XIII. the
privilege of exercising the art of medicine. Even in
Rome, in spite of the opposition of the tradesmen,
and the prohibitions of the Pope, they carry on trade
in baking, grocery, etc. Let us imagine twenty
thousand traders, dispersed over the world, from
Japan to Brazil, from the Cape of Good Hope to the
north, all correspondents of each other, all blindly
subjected to one individual, and working for him
alone ; conducting two hundred missions, which are
so many factories ; six hundred and twelve colleges,
and four hundred and twenty-three houses of profes-
sors, noviciates, and residents, which are so many
entrepots ; and then let us form an idea, if we can, of
the produce of so vast an extent."

There have not been wanting advocates for these
persevering, intriguing priests ; who have represented

158 PRIESTCRAFT

them as merely labouring to promote religion amongst
the civilized, and civilization amongst the savage
nations. But what says all history ? What says the
indignation of every realm which has ever harboured
them ? That wherever they were, whatever they
undertook, whether the education of youth in Europe,
or that of the natives of savage lands, all their plans
turned to one object — absolute dominion over the
minds and bodies of their disciples. They seem to
have taken a particular pleasure in breaking in upon
the labours and in persecuting all other missionaries ;
— and by their detestable and ambitious acts, Chris-
tianity has been expelled from various regions where
it was taking root. This was the case in Japan and
China. Here they first thwarted the measures of
other missionaries, then got all power into their
hands, and finally were driven out with wrath by the
natives. In China their suppression was connected
with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. The
Bishop of Nankin names two to the Pope whose
vices had become public. " But the crime of Father
Anthony Joseph, the superior of the mission, is yet
more scandalous. This man has remained there eight
years past, continually plunged in the abominable
practice of sinning with women at the time they come
to confess, and even in the place where he confessed
them ; after which he gave them absolution, and ad-
ministered the Sacrament to them! He told them
that these actions need not give them any concern,
since all their Fathers, the Bishops, and the Pope
himself, observed the same practice !

" All this was known to Christians and to Heathens.
Some persons represented these crimes to the supe-
riors of the Jesuits ; but the commissary whom they
sent for the purpose, declared him innocent — I know
not upon what pretence. While I was considering

IN ALL AGES. 159

the best means of punishing this man, the mandarins
caused him to be arrested, suddenly, with two of his
brethren, and about one hundred Christians. What
occasioned still greater scandal, the mandarins, who
had been some time acquainted with part of the facts,
collected correct depositions to establish his crimes,
and announced them at full length in their sentence,
which they made public. He was condemned to
death, with the other Jesuit, on the 22d of Septem-
ber, 1748, and they were both strangled in prison.
Of the hundred persons who were arrested with him,
there was not one who did not renounce Christianity,
and the Chinese missionary was the first to do so.

For more than two hundred years they maintained
a system of opposition and vexation to the bishops
and missionaries of India, in the very face of the
Pope's commands to the contrary. Of their attempt
to establish an independent kingdom in Paraguay,
every one has heard. Under pretence of preserving
the Indians free from the vices of the Europeans,
they forbade them to learn their language ; under
pretence of protecting them from the oppressions of
the Europeans, they regularly disciplined large bodies
of them in arms. For them these simple creatures
toiled, and their minds they moulded entirely to sub-
serviency to them. They refused all Europeans,
except their own confederates, entrance to the pro-
vince ; and actually, on the authorities marching into
it in the name of the Kings of Portugal and Spain,
rose against them and attempted to expel them by
force of arms. They hesitated not to send emissaries
over to Europe to blow the flames of sedition there,
and even attempted the life of the King of Portugal,
in order to divert the efforts of their rightful monarchs
from them ; but finally they were themselves sub-
dued, and driven out of the country, to the total dis-

160 PRIESTCRAFT

sipation of their grand scheme of rebellion and empire.
For those who have patience to read the scandalous
and bloody squabbles of priests, there are copious
details of these matters in the second volume of
Southey's History of Brazil ; and especially of their
contests with Cardenas, the bishop.

In Europe they signalized themselves by perpetual
attempts against the peace of states, and the lives of
monarchs. In Venice, in 1560, they excited great
commotion, and were very near being driven away.
They shewed great anxiety to confess the wives of
the senators, for the purpose, it was believed, of
acquiring the secrets of the republic. Trevisani, the
Patriarch of Venice, says Sacchini, satisfied himself
of the charge, and made other discoveries of still
greater importance. In the Netherlands, in Portugal
and Spain, they were busy in similar schemes, and
with similar results. In Poland, they had the fortune
to get a man of their order, Sigismund, upon the
throne. He desired to introduce them into Sweden,
where his uncle, Duke Charles, was his lieutenant.
Charles remonstrated, in vain, that the people of
Sweden would not endure the Jesuits : the king per-
sisted, and the people took arms against him. He
was beaten both by sea and land ; taken prisoner ;
and only released on condition that he would assemble
his states, and act in conjunction with them. He
then escaped from Sweden, and strove to arm the
Poles against the Swedes ; but they refused the alli-
ance, and in the mean time his uncle seized upon his
towns.

With the continual attempts of these pertinacious
wretches against the liberties of England, and the
lives of Elizabeth and James I., every English reader
is familiar: the names of Crichton, Garnett, Parry,
Cullen, Gerard, and Tesmond, successively engaged

IN ALL AGES. 161

in the design of assassinating the protestant queen, or
in the attempt to blow up our English Solomon and
all his parliament, will for ever perpetuate their
abhorrence in England; and in Ireland the general
massacre of the protestants in 1641, which they were
principally concerned in exciting, and similar proceed-
ings in that country, will keep alive their remembrance
there. But of all their atrocities there are none which
more affect one with indignation, than their persecu-
tions and murder of Henry III. and Henry IV. of
France. In 1563, according to Mezerai, the famous
catholic league took its rise, whose object was to
extirpate the protestants in France. The Jesuits
became the soul of this infamous federation. Henry
III. assembled the states at Blois in 1579, for the
purpose of dissolving this conspiracy ; and from that
time, was marked for destruction. Sammier, a Jesuit,
traversed Germany, Italy, and Spain, to excite the
princes of those countries against him. Mattheiu,
another, styled the courier of the league, made several
journeys to the pope, to obtain a bull against him;
and though the pope hesitated at this, he delivered
his opinion, that the person of Henry should be
secured, and his cities seized. Commolet and Rouillet
were the trumpets of sedition. In the college of
the Rue St. Jaques, the Jesuits met and conspired
the murder of the king. It was there Baniere came
to be stirred up by the doctrines of Varade, — and
that Guinard composed the writings, for which he was
hung. It was there that the Sixteen signed an abso-
lute cession of the kingdom to Philip of Spain ; and
that Chastel acquired the lesson of parricide he after-
wards acted upon. There Clement, animated by
such horrible instructions, formed the resolve which
he fulfilled on the 1st of August, 1589, the assassina-
tion of Henry III.

M

162 PRIESTCRAFT

Henry IV., a generous spirited and noble monarch,
was educated in protestantism ; — this was enough to
arouse their murderous and unappeasable hatred. It
was almost by miracle that he escaped, then a youth,
from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On his
coming to the throne, he was pursued by them with
such continual animosity, that to allay their fury, he
consented to embrace Catholicism. This produced no
effect — he was a man of liberal opinions ; and such a
man they could not tolerate. They made his life
miserable ; and at length nearly effected his murder
by the knife of Baniere, at Melun, in August 1593.
On the 27th of December, 1594, his life was again
attempted by Chastel, another Jesuit. He struck at
him with a knife, but missed his aim, and instead of
killing him, only cut his lip, and struck out a tooth.
This circumstance, and the ferment of infernal fanati-
cism, which induced the papists and Jesuits to conti-
nually seek the destruction of the king, caused the
banishment of the whole order. This, however, did
not mend the matter, as it regarded the king ; — he had
only the same enemies in disguise, and, if possible,
ten times more embittered. With that good nature
which characterized him, he at length consented to
allow them to return. It was in vain that Sully, his
minister, represented to him that no kindness could
soften such foes ; — he recalled them, and fell a victim
to their instigations, being stabbed by Ravaillac, on
May 14th, 1610.

Many books had been written of late by the Jesuits,
vindicating and commending the killing of kings,
particularly the work of Mariana, — De Rege et Regis
Institutione, in which the killing of a king was termed
a "laudable, glorious, and heroic action." It was by
such writings that this assassin was spurred on to his
diabolical act. Aubigny, his confessor, ajesuit, when

IN ALL AGES. 1G3

confronted with the murderer, and charged with being
privy to the design, at first denied knowing the
man at all ; but when driven from that assertion, he
declared that " God had given to some the gift of
tongues, to others the gift of prophecy, and to him
the gift of forgetting confessions."

Such were the abominable principles which led
them to these abominable actions. For a full account
of this assassination, the reader may consult the
fourth volume of Sully's Memoirs. So generally was
the conspiracy known amongst the catholic subjects
of this unfortunate monarch, that many people de-
clared, on the day when the murder took place, that
the king was then dying, though they were in distant
places. An astrologer had foretold the very day and
hour to the king, the manner of the act, and that it
would take place in a coach. So much impressed
was the king with his approaching fate, that he was
frequently in great agony of mind, and would fain
have put off the queen's coronation, which was about
to take place at the time predicted. He had terrible
dreams, and so also had the queen, waking in horror,
and crying out the king was stabbed. All these
things which the common mind loves to believe
supernatural intimations, only shew to the more
reflecting one, the audacity of these bloody wretches,
who were so confident in their power of doing evil,
that they spoke of it till it became a universal im-
pression.

From the terrible Jesuit there is but one step
further in horror, and that is to the Inquisitor ! And,
in fact, it can scarcely be called a step at all, for both
characters are frequently combined in the same indi-
vidual. Jesuits, it will be seen in all the histories of
the inquisition, are as active as the Dominicans
themselves, who claim the peculiar honour, or more
m2

164 PRIESTCRAFT

properly infamy, of possessing, from the head of their
order, the office of inquisitors ; that is, fiends incarnate.
In speaking of the extermination of the Troubadours,
we have already noticed the rise of the Inquisition. It
was an institution so congenial to the nature of popery,
that its holy offices — its offices of mercy, as they
were called in that spirit of devilish abuse of Chris-
tianity in which they were conceived, were speedily
to be found in various countries of Europe, Asia, and
America, but distinguished most fearfully in Spain.
Their horrors have been made familiar to the public
mind by the writers of romance, especially by Mrs.
RatclifTe; but all the powers of romance have not
been able to overcolour the reality. Spain has always
claimed and gloried in the supremacy of her inquisi-
tion. She has strenuously contended with the pope
for it ; and has deemed it so national an honour, as to
parade the auto-da-fe as one of her most fascinating
spectacles. Her kings, her queens, her princes, and
nobles, have assembled with enthusiasm to witness
them. So great a treat did the Spaniards formerly
consider them, that Llorente states that on February
25th, 1560, one was celebrated by the inquisitors of
Toledo, in which several persons were burnt, with
some effigies, and a great number subjected to
penances; and this was performed to entertain the
new queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry TI. of France,
a girl of thirteen years of age, accustomed in her own
country to brilliant festivals suitable to her rank and
age. So completely may priestcraft brutalize a nation,
and so completely has this devilish institution stamped
the Spanish character, naturally ardent and chivalric,
with gloomy horror, that both Llorente and Limborch
represent ladies witnessing the agonizing tortures of
men and women expiring in flames, with transports of
delight. By means of this infernal machine, the

IN ALL AGES. 165

Spanish kings have contrived to crush the mind of the
country; to check the growth of literature; to nourish
a spirit of ferocity ; and to produce a race of people the
slaves of the worst government, and the most ignorant
and bigoted priests. To this cause in fact, Spain owes
its present misery and degradation. Llorente, whose
work is founded on official documents, drawn from
the archives of the inquisition itself, when he was
secretary to it, gives a long list of the learned and
ingenious Spaniards whom it has persecuted and
condemned. The ostensible object of its early exer-
tions, was to extirpate the Jews, Moors and Morescoes ;
and so successful were its efforts, that Llorente cal-
culates that in one hundred and nineteen years it
deprived Spain of three millions of inhabitants.
Mariana says 170,000 families of Jews were banished,
and the rest sold for slaves. They entered Portugal,
but were again commanded by the Portuguese king to
quit that realm also. The Moors were suffered to
depart ; but as the Jews were preparing to do so, the
king commanded that all those who were not more
than fourteen years old, should be taken from their
parents and educated in the Christian religion. It
was a most afflicting thing, to see children snatched
from the embraces of their mothers ; and fathers em-
bracing their children, torn from them, and even
beaten with clubs ; to hear the dreadful cries they
made, and every place filled with the lamentations
and yells of women. Many through indignation,
threw their sons into pits, and others killed them with
their own hands. Thus prevented on the one hand
from embarking, and on the other oppressed and per-
secuted, many feigned conversion, to escape from their
miseries. The cruelties practised on these people,
to compel them to embrace a religion which was
thus represented as only fit for devils, make one's

166 PRIESTCRAFT

blood boil to read them. The Reformation appeared,
and found these monsters fresh employment. The
doctrines of Luther appear to have made so rapid a
progress scarcely in any country as in Spain. Num-
bers of the highest ranks, of the most intelligent
ladies, of ecclesiastics, embraced the principles of the
reformer ; and, had it not been for the inquisition,
that country might now have figured in the front of
Europe with a more glorious aspect, as a great and
enlightened state, than it did under Charles V. The
inquisition had the satisfaction of extinguishing the
revived flame of Christianity, and of reducing Spain
to its present deplorable condition. All the fury and
strength of that great engine of hell was brought to
bear upon it : its auto-da-fe were crowded with
Lutheran heretics ; its fires consumed them ; its
secret cells devoured them — men, women, children
were swept into its unfathomable gulph of destruction.
Priestly malice triumphed over truth and virtue.

To such gigantic stature of power did this dismal
institution attain, that no one was safe from its fangs.
The confiscation of the goods of its victims whetted
the appetite of priestly avarice so keenly, that a man
to be guilty of heresy had only to be rich. Llorente
gives several cases of English merchants, who were
pounced upon by it in defiance of the law of nations.
On one occasion Oliver Cromwell had to intercede for
an English consul, whom they had got into their
dens. The king replied, he had no power over the
inquisition. " Then," added Cromwell, in a second
message, "if you have no power over the inquisition,
I will declare war against it." The threat was effec-
tual. So little power had the Spanish kings over it,
indeed, that it did not hesitate to accuse them ; and
Llorente's lists are full of nobles, privy councillors,
knights, magistrates, military commanders, and ladies

W ALL AGES. 167

of the highest birth, on whom these daring priests
laid their hands, and loaded them with chains and
infamy. It seemed a peculiar delight to them to
insult and degrade those who had moved in the most
distinguished spheres. In Portugal, says Limborch,
all the prisoners, men and women, without any
regard to birth or dignity, are shaved the first or
second day of their imprisonment. Each prisoner has
two pots of water every day : one to wash, and the
other to drink $ a besom to cleanse his cell, and a mat
of rushes to lie upon.

The same historian gives, in a few passages, a vivid
summary of the operations of this odious institution.
" In countries where the inquisition has existed, the
bare idea of its progress damped the most ardent
mind. Formidable and ferocious as the rapacious
tiger, who from the gloomy thicket surveys his unsus-
pecting prey, until the favoured moment arrives in
which he may plunge forward and consummate its
destruction, the inquisition meditates in secret and in
silence its horrific projects. In the deepest seclu-
sion the calumniator propounds his charge ; with
anxious vigilance the creatures of its power regard
its unhappy victim. Not a whisper is heard, or the
least hint of insecurity given, until at the dead of
night a band of savage monsters surround the dwell-
ing ; they demand an entrance : — upon the inquiry, by
whom is this required? the answer is, "the holy
office." In an instant all the ties of nature appear
as if dissolved, and either through the complete do-
minion of superstition, or the conviction that resist-
ance would be vain, the master, parent, husband is
resigned. From the bosom of his family, and bereft
of all domestic comforts, he enters the inquisition
house ; its ponderous doors are closed, and hope ex-

1C8 PRIESTCRAFT

eluded — perhaps for ever. Immured in a noisome
vault, surrounded by impenetrable walls, he is lef
alone ; a prey to all the sad reflections of a miserable
outcast. If he venture to inquire the reason of his
fate, he is told, that silence and secresy are here
inviolable. Accustomed to the conveniences of social
life, and perhaps of a superior station, he is now
reduced to the most miserable expedients. The most
menial offices now devolve upon him; while the cruel
reflection obtrudes itself upon his mind, that his
family may, ere long, be reduced to indigence by an
act of inquisitorial confiscation." And with such
fiendish ingenuity is the punishment of confiscation
aggravated, that it is followed as of necessary conse-
quence, by the person being rendered for ever
infamous, — that is, he is incapable of holding office
of any kind ; his children are disinherited, and made
infamous, or incapable to the second generation by
the father's side, and first by the mother's. All his
relations are liberated from their obligations to him,
or connexion with him ; his children are freed from
his control ; his wife is liberated from her marriage
vows ; his servants or vassals are freed from their
servitude ; he is compelled to answer inquiries of
others on any affair, but no one need answer him.
He has no protection from the laws, and no remedy
against oppression or injustice. His very children,
brothers and sisters, ought to abandon him ; and the
only way of a son escaping the infamy of his father, is
by being the first to accuse him to the tribunal of the
inquisition.

Then come the secret examinations, the accusa-
tions from unknown sources, the intimidations, — the
torture ! The torture has five degrees : — first, being
threatened to be tortured: secondly, being carried

IN ALL AGES. 169

to the place of torture : thirdly, by stripping and
binding : fourthly, the being hoisted on the rack :
fifthly, squassation.

The stripping is performed without regard to
humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women
and virgins. As to squassation, it is thus performed :
the prisoner has his hands tied behind his back, and
weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on
high, till his head reaches the very pulley. He is kept
hanging in this manner for some time, that by the great-
ness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints
and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sud-
den he is let down with a jerk, by slackening the rope,
but kept from coming quite to the ground ; by which
terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed,
whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain ; the
shock which he receives by the sudden stop put to
his fall, and the weight at his feet, stretching his whole
body more intensely and cruelly. According to the
orders of the inquisition, this squassation is repeated
once, twice, or three times in the space of an hour.

Another mode of torture is, by covering the mouth
and nostrils with a thin cloth, so that the victim is
scarcely able to breathe through them ; then, letting
Ml from on high water, drop by drop, on his mouth,
which so easily sinks through the cloth to the bottom
of his throat, so that it is impossible for him to
breathe, his mouth being filled with water, his nostrils
with the cloth ; so that the poor wretch is in the
agony of death. When this cloth is pulled out of his
mouth, as it often is, to answer questions, it is all
over water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels
through his mouth. All this time he is lying in
what is called the wooden-horse ; that is, a trough
across which a bar is placed, on which the man's
back rests, instead of on the bottom, while his arms,

170

PRIESTCRAFT

shins, and thighs are tied round with small cords,
drawn tight by screws, till they cut to the very
bones.

The physician Orobio, a Jew, gave a most lively
account of the torture practised upon him after he
had lain in his dungeon three years. He was brought
to the place of torture. It was towards evening.
It was a large underground room, arched, and the
walls covered with black hangings. The candle-
sticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole
enlightened with candles placed in them. At one
end there was an enclosed place, like a closet, where
the inquisitor and notary sate at a table : so that the
place seemed to him the very mansion of death,
everything appearing so terrible and so awful. After
some preliminary torments, such as tying his thumbs
with small cords till the blood spouted out from
beneath the nails; they fastened him with small
cords, by means of little iron pulleys, to a wall as
he sate upon a bench ; then drawing the cords which
fastened his fingers and toes with great violence, they
drew the bench from under him, and left him sus-
pended in the strings, till he seemed to be dissolving
in flame, such was his agony. Then they brought a
sort of ladder and struck it against his shins, giving
five violent strokes at once ; under the exquisite pain
of which he fainted away. They then screwed up
his cords with fresh violence, and tied others so near
that they slid into the gashes the first had made, and
produced such an effusion of blood that they sup-
posed him dying. On finding, however, that he was
not, they repeated the torture once more, and then
remanded him to his cell!" To imagine men prac-
tising these cruelties on men, and that in the outraged
name of Christ, the fountain of love and mercy, is
revolting enough ; but to read of them mangling, dis-

IN ALL AGES. 171

locating, and dashing to pieces the delicate frames of
young and lovely women, of which Llorente gives
various instances, puts the climax to our abhorrent
indignation. Such, in particular, were the treat-
ment of Jane Bohorques, and her attendant, a young
Lutheran girl, afterwards burnt at the auto-da-fe.*

A word on these auto-da-fe, and we will escape
from these horrors. Dr. Geddes' account of the
manner of celebrating them, as quoted in Limborch,
is one of the best and most condensed. " In the
morning of the day the prisoners are all brought into
a great hall, where they have the habits put on they
are to wear in the procession, which begins to come
out of the inquisition about nine o'clock in the
morning.

" The first in the procession are the Dominicans,
who carry the standard of the inquisition, which
on the one side hath their founder Dominic's pic-
ture, and on the other side the cross between an
olive tree and a sword, with this motto, ' Justitia
et Miserecordia.' Next after the Dominicans come
the penitents, some with benitoes and some with-
out, according to the nature of their crimes. They
are all in black coats without sleeves, and bare-
footed, with a wax candle in their hands. Next
come the penitents who have narrowly escaped being
burnt, who, over their black coat have flames painted
with their points turned downwards, to signify their

* The methods of torture are not merely such as I have here
given — they are infinitely varied, and too dreadful to be borne
even in the recital. With them it is, indeed, a matter of science ;
and is treated of in a volume to be found in the libraries of this
country — The Art of Torture — in which the most ingenious
modes of producing physical agony are detailed with the coolest
accuracy. I recollect the horror with which a friend of mine
opened this book, in the library of the Earl of Shrewsbury at
Alton.

172 PRIESTCRAFT

having been saved, but so as by fire. Next come
the negative and relapsed that are to be burnt, with
flames [upon their habit, pointing upward ; and next
come those who profess doctrines contrary to those of
the church of Rome, and who, besides flames on
their habit pointing upward, have their picture,
which is drawn two or three days before, upon their
breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all with
open mouths, painted about it.

" Pegna, a famous Spanish inquisitor, calls this
procession ' Horrendum ac tremendum spectaculum ;'
and so it is, in truth, there being something in the
looks of all the prisoners, besides those that are to be
burnt, that is ghastly and disconsolate beyond what
can be imagined ; and in the eyes and countenances
of those that are to be burnt, there is something that
looks fierce and eager.

" The prisoners that are to be burnt alive, besides
a familiar which all the rest have, have a Jesuit on
each hand of them, who is continually preaching to
them to abjure their heresies ; but if they offer to
speak any thing in defence of the doctrines for which
they are going to suffer death, they are immediately
gagged. This I saw done to a prisoner presently
after he came out of the gates of the inquisition, upon
his having looked up at the sun, which he had not
seen for several years, and cried out in a rapture —
1 How is it possible for people that behold that glo-
rious body, to worship any being but Him that created
it!' After the prisoners, comes a troop of familiars
on horseback, and after them the inquisitors and
other officers of the court upon mules ; and last of
all comes the inquisitor-general, upon a white horse
led by two men, with a black hat and green hat-band,
and attended by all the nobles that are not employed
as familiars in the procession.

IN ALL AGES. 173

" At the place of execution, which at Lisbon is the
Ribera, there are so many stakes set up as there are
prisoners to be burnt, with a good quantity of dry
furze about them. The stakes of the professed, as
the inquisitors call them, may be about four yards
high, and have a small board whereon the prisoner is
to be seated, within half a yard of the top. The
negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt,
the professed go up a ladder betwixt the two Jesuits,
who spend about a quarter of an hour in exhorting
them to be reconciled to the church of Rome ; which,
if they refuse, the Jesuits descend, the executioner
ascends and secures them to the stake. The Jesuits
then go up a second time, and at parting tell them —
* they leave them to the devil, who stands at their elbow
to receive their souls, and carry them into the flames
of hell-fire.' Upon this a great shout is raised, ' Let
the dogs' beards be made !' which is done by thrusting
flaming furzes, fastened to long poles, against their
faces. And this inhumanity is commonly continued
until their faces are burnt to a coal, and is always
acompanied by such loud acclamations of joy as are
not to be heard on any other occasion ; a bull-feast or
a fair being dull entertainments to this.

" The professeds' beards having been thus made, or
trimmed, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the
furze which are at the bottom of the stake, and
above which the professed are chained so high that
the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the
seat they sit on ; and if there happen to be a wind,
to which that place is much exposed, it seldom
reaches so high as their knees. If it be calm they
may be dead in half an hour, but if windy they are
not dead in an hour and a half or two hours, and are
really roasted, not burnt to death. But though, out
of hell, there cannot possibly be a more lamentable

174 PRIESTCRAFT

spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers'
continual cry of, ' Miserecordia por amor de Diost'
Mercy for the love of God ! yet it is beheld by people
of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of
joy and satisfaction, as are not witnessed on any
other occasion."

Mr. Wilcox, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester,
wrote to Bishop Burnet, that he witnessed at Lisbon
in 1706, Hector Dias and Maria Pinteyra burnt
alive. The woman was alive in the flames half an
hour; the man about an hour. The king and his
brother were seated at a window so near as to be
addressed for a considerable time in very moving
terms by the man as he was burning. All he asked
was a few more fagots, yet he could not obtain them.
The wind being a little fresh, the man's hinder parts
were perfectly roasted; and as he turned himself
round, his ribs opened before he left speaking, the
fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep him just in
the same degree of heat ; but all his entreaties could
not procure him a larger allowance of wood, to
despatch him more speedily.

The victims who have suffered death or ruin from
this diabolical institution in various quarters of the
world, are estimated at some millions. Llorente
gives, from actual examination of its own records,
the following statement of the victims of the Spanish
Inquisition alone.

Number of persons who were con-
demned and perished in the flames 31,912

Effigies burnt 17,659

Condemned to severe penances . . 291,450

341,021

And these things the choicest agents of the devil.

IN ALL AGES. 175

have dared to act in the name of Christ, and men
have believed them ! Amid all the crimes of Napo-
leon; let it be for ever remembered that he annihilated
this earthly hell with a word, — but Englishmen re-
stored Ferdinand to the throne of Spain, and Ferdi-
nand restored the inquisition. We fought to give
Spaniards freedom, and we gave them the most blasting
despotism which ever walked the earth — the despot-
ism of priestcraft ; with fire in one hand, and eternal
darkness and degradation in the other. Cromwell
had a different spirit — he menaced war on the inqui-
sition— and the menace was heard to the lowest
depths of its infernal dens. If the arm of cruelty be
shortened, it is neither owing to the priests nor their
creature Ferdinand, but to the light which has entered
Spain during its political concussions.

Another subject connected with this history might
also form a separate chapter- — the state of those Eu-
ropean countries which yet retain popery. It would
be an interesting inquiry, and would amply bear out
the character already drawn of priestcraft ; but the
consideration of our own state-religion draws me on,
and I must refer my readers to the abundant works
of our modern travellers for those matters — if indeed
it be not enough to lift our eyes, and, at a cursory
view, see the mark of the beast stamped on the bosom
of every nation where it prevails — in characters of
slavery, ignorance, calamity, and blood. France,
roused by the united oppressions of kingcraft and
priestcraft, rushed into a premature struggle with
them, in which religion and liberty were both wrecked,
and such horrors perpetrated as turn the sickening
eyes of the beholder away, blinded with burning tears.
France, thirsting for civil and religious freedom, yet
unprepared in its popular heart for its secure enjoy-
ment, arose like a giant in wrath, and smarting with

176 PRIESTCRAFT

the accumulated inflictions of popery and civil des-
potism, crushed together its wrongs and its hopes.
France, starting from the extreme slumber of papal
slavery — a state in which its population received pas-
sively all dogmas and all ordinances, a state without
inquiry — plunged at once into the opposite extreme
of restless scrutiny after the true principles of govern-
ment and religion ; and like a man issuing at full
speed from darkness to the glare of noonday, has
seen nothing but indistinct and overpowering images
of things — felt nothing but the wild frenzy of sud-
denly-acquired freedom ; and has consequently floun-
dered on through changes, revolutions, and reeling
instability, that have been more fatal to the progress
qf true liberty than all the assaults of its determined
enemies. On the other hand, Spain and Portugal,
with a certain portion of intelligent and philosophical
inhabitants, groan under the dead weight of their old
papal institutions and trains of priests, and wound
themselves to death in the vain endeavour to throw
them off, before the people are sufficiently regenerated
with the inbreakings of knowledge to give vigour to
the contest. In them we see the full consequences
of the establishment of inquisitions, by which the
public mind acquires a habit of fear, and an incapacity
for daring development of mental energy, even where
the cause of real fear is no more. Were the people
of these countries once educated, they would throw
off monks, priests, and wicked kings, with the ease
that Sampson threw off his writhes — but where shall
this begin, where knowledge has long been treated as
damnable, and has been punished with death ? Such
is the state of ignorance, which it is the interest and
has always been the practice of popery to maintain
in those countries, that Lord Byron, speaking of the
ladies, says, they are beautiful, but the countess is

IN ALL AGES. 177

no better informed than the commonest peasant girl.
Italy too lies prostrate beneath the double tyranny
of the altar and the throne of the foreign barbarian, —
and the end of those things it is not easy to see.
Eternal are the thanks, the gratitude, and the honours
due to Huss, to Jerome of Prague, to Oldcastle,
to WyclifFe, and other martyrs and reformers, who
attempted, and to Luther and his contemporaries, who
finally succeeded in breaking down this mightiest of
spiritual despotisms, and freeing part of mankind from
the nightmare of a thousand years ; leaving us in the
bright day-beams of knowledge and freedom, not to
suffer, but to sigh over the miseries which the bloodiest
of priesthoods has inflicted for centuries on the world ;
— and not to sigh only, but to exert ourselves to
spread still wider the impulse of good which they
have given. Who shall tell what effects on the con-
tinental nations the regeneration of the religious in-
stitutions of this mighty and illustrious nation shall
yet produce 1

178 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XV.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Where one particular priesthood has rank in the state, others
are not free ; and where they all have, the people are not free.
So far as the ceremonies of one particular faith are connected
with filling any particular occupation, entering into the rela-
tions, or enjoying any of the advantages of civil life, there is not
religious liberty. It is a fallacious distinction which has some-
times been drawn, that a state may patronize, though it should
not punish. A government cannot patronize one particular
religion without punishing others. A state has no wealth but
the people's wealth ; if it pay some, it impoverishes others. A
state ist no fountain of honour. If it declare one class free, it
thereby declares others slaves. If it declare some noble, it thereby
declares others ignoble. Whenever bestowed with partiality, its
generosity is injustice, and its favour is oppression.

W. J. Fox's Sermons on the Mission, Character,
and Doctrine of Christ.

One would have imagined that when the horrors
and enormities of that long reign of spiritual slavery
which I have been detailing — that of the infamous
papal hierarchy — had roused a great part of Europe to
scotch the old serpent of Rome ; to burst asunder
the vile and envenomed folds which she had wrapped
round the soul, the life, and liberties of man, — that
the reformed churches would have been careful so to
organize themselves as to prevent temporal power

IN ALL AGES. 179

again enslaving religion. But, in the first place, it is
no easy matter to escape the grasp of regal and
political dominion ; and in the next, it is rarely the
case that men are prepared, after a long sufferance of
slavery, to enjoy and secure freedom. To expect
this, is to expect that he whose body has been
cramped by chains, and wasted by vigils in the dark
dungeons of power for years, should at once, on
coming out, stretch forth his limbs, acquire in a mo-
ment the vigour and elasticity of his muscles, and
bound over the hills with the breathing buoyancy
of the youthful hunter, to whom every day brings
exercise, and with exercise, force and adroitness. It
is to expect that the issuer from the dungeon shall
bear at once the light of day with an eagle's glance,
and regard every thing around him with the perspi-
cuous familiarity of those who have daily walked
about in the eye of heaven. Besides, in the exult-
ation of conquest over an old despotism, the populace
are always, for the moment, too credulously trusting
to the professions of those who pretend to rejoice with
them in order to enslave them anew. In a while they
wake from their dream of good nature, but it is too
late, — they are again clasped in bonds, and environed
with bars that nothing but the oppressions of ages
can corrode, and some far-off out-breaking of popular
indignation can dash asunder.

Such has been the fate, more or less, of all the re-
formed churches of Europe ; but their fortunes we
cannot follow, we must confine ourselves to the
Church of England; — the least reformed, the most
enslaved of all. The reformation in England was
commenced and continued, and so far as it went,
under unfortunate circumstances. It was not the
result of such a ripened and irrestrainable enthusiasm
of the popular mind as must have thrown down all

n 2

180 PRIESTCRAFT

before it ; but it was brought about by the arbitrary-
passions of that monster, Henry VIII. — one of the
most libidinous and bloody wretches that ever dis-
graced a throne. At one moment it was his will,
because it suited his pleasure, to be the advocate of
the pope ; at another, because it was necessary to the
gratification of his indomitable desires, — his most
desperate antagonist. For this he threw off the
papal yoke — but not to give the church freedom —
nothing could be farther from his intentions : it was
only to make it his servant and his slave. He de-
clared himself the head of the church of Christ in
these kingdoms. What a head for such a church !
The despotism of opinion was only changed in name ;
and it appears to have been the effect of the merest
accident that it was changed at all. Everything was
on the point of being amicably settled between the
British and the Italian tyrant, when it was rumoured
at the papal court, that Henry had witnessed a dra-
matic representation in which that court was ridiculed.
In a moment of impolitic passion, the " triple tyrant"
thundered against Henry his bull of denunciation,
and the breach was made immortal. Heavily and
long did the pontiff curse the moment in which he
forgot, in his passion, the priest's proper cunning ;
but his regret was unavailing — England was lost
for ever.

Edward VI. was a truly pious youth, and was
unquestionably desirous of doing what was right;
but he was a feeble invalid, and was in the hands of
priests, who did with him as they pleased. By
authority exercised in his name, a liturgy was
framed for the church ; which Elizabeth afterwards
revised by her bishops, and brought to that state in
which it substantially remains to this day. It was
not in the nature of that man in petticoats, — that

IN ALL AGES. 181

Henry VIII. in a female mask, — to consult the
inclinations of the people so much as her own high
will, in which glowed all the dominance and all the
spirit of the Tudors. Instead of being willing, say
Heylin and Strype, to strip religion of the ceremo-
nies which remained in it, she was rather inclined to
bring the public worship still nearer to the Roman
ritual ; and had a great propensity to several usages
in the church of Rome which were justly looked upon
as superstitious. She thanked publicly one of her
chaplains who had preached in defence of the real
presence; she was fond of images, and retained some
in her chapel ; and would undoubtedly have forbidden
the marriage of the clergy, if Cecil, her secretary, had
not interposed. Having appointed a committee of
divines to revise king Edward's liturgy, she gave
them an order to strike out all offensive passages
against the pope, and make people easy about the
corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament.

That an imperious woman, who, not finding it
accordant with the love of undivided power to marry,
was jealous of all who did ; who even imprisoned her
relatives and maids of honour who presumed to
marry, should attempt to prevent the clergy marry-
ing, was not very wonderful : but she did not stop
here. Those of her subjects who were desirous of
a purer, simpler, more apostolic, and less worldly
system of worship ; who had fled to the continent
from the fire and chains of her sister Mary, and had
returned, hoping better things at her hands, she
ordered to submit to her royal will ; and passed the
famous act of Uniformity, by which all her subjects
were commanded to observe the rules her bishops had
framed, and to take up with such a reformation of the
church as she had pleased to give them, with herself
as the visible head of the church upon earth. The

182 PRIESTCRAFT

puritans — for so they were called, for desiring a purer
worship — refused their assent to these proceedings;
pleaded the dictates of their consciences in behalf of
their refusal ; and complained heavily, that the gross
superstitions of popery, which they had looked upon
as abrogated and abolished, were now revived, and even
imposed by authority. But they pleaded and com-
plained in vain. What were their consciences to this
she tyrant ? the indulgence of whose self-will was of
more precious value in her eyes than the rights and
consciences of millions of people. She not only
commanded and exacted ; but following the example
of popery, she set up the fire and fagot, and stopped
all objections with those powerful arguments. It is
a singular fact, that no state religion, pagan or Chris-
tian, from the foundation of the world, as this history
will shew, but is stained with blood. Henry VIII.,
Edward VI., and Elizabeth, all resorted to it, and
while professing to reform religion, they gave the
death-blow to liberty of conscience, and reacted all
the horrors of Roman persecution. Edward, indeed,
in the tenderness of youth, had a better sense of the
nature of Christianity, and earnestly and with many
tears endeavoured to avoid the bloody work of perse-
cution put upon him by the priests about him, and
especially by Cranmer, who afterwards received the
fit retribution of dying in that fire he had so
zealously kindled for others.

What could be expected of a church thus born in
the throes of the most evil passions, cradled in arbi-
trary power, and baptized in blood ? — Nothing but a
melancholy death of all those high and glorious hopes
which the Reformation awoke, and had it been per-
mitted, unshackled by regal and priestly power, to
take its course, would naturally have realized.
Elizabeth proceeded, with that rigorous and strong

IN ALL AGES. 183

hand which made her civil government respected, but
was most unhallowedly and calamitously thrust into
the sacred tabernacle of conscience, to establish a
court of high commission to enforce those popish
rites, doctrines, and ceremonies which she had com-
pelled the English church to adopt. For the parti-
culars of the tyrannies exercised by this Inquisition
over those who asserted the rights of conscience, in
the face of this strangely reformed church, let the
reader consult Rapin, Hume, and Neale's History of
the Puritans. It took its rise from a remarkable
clause in the Act of Supremacy, by which the queen
and her successors were empowered to choose per-
sons " to exercise under her all manner of jurisdic-
tion, privileges, and pre-eminences, touching any
spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England and
Ireland ; as also to visit, reform, redress, order, cor-
rect, and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses,
contempts, offences, and enormities whatever ; pro-
vided that they have no power to determine anything
to be heresy but what has been adjudged by the
authority of the canonical scriptures, or four first
general councils, or any of them, or shall be so
declared by parliament with consent of the clergy in
convocation." These commissioners were empowered
to make inquiry, not only by legal methods, but also
by all other means which they could devise, that is
by rack, torture, inquisition and imprisonment. They
had authority to examine all persons that they sus-
pected, or feigned to suspect, by an oath, not allowed
by their commission, and therefore called ex-officio,
who were obliged to answer all questions, and thus
to criminate themselves and friends. The fines they
imposed were discretionary; the imprisonment to
which they doomed was limited by no rule but their
own pleasure ; they imposed as they pleased new

184 PRIESTCRAFT

articles of faith on the clergy, and practised all the
cruelties and iniquities of a real inquisition.

Thus, indeed, was the inquisition as fully and com-
pletely set up in England, by a soi-disant reforming
queen and reformed church, as in Italy, Spain, or
any of the old priest-ridden countries of popery ; and
how its powers were exercised may be seen in too
fearful colours on the broad page of English history ;
in the more full relations of the non- conformists and
dissenters. Clergymen who could not thus mould
their consciences at the will of the state, were ejected
without mercy from their livings, and they and their
families exposed to all the horrors of poverty, con-
tempt, and persecution. So far as the regular clergy,
however, were concerned, the grievance was not
great; for these principally consisted of Catholics,
who had got in during Mary's reign, and having a
clear perception that they were well off, and that
there was little hope of another Romish prince suc-
ceeding very speedily, they acted according to the
dictates of the priestly cunning, accommodated their
consciences to their comfortable condition, and came
over in a body to the new state of things. The
bishops, Hume says, having the eye of the world
more particularly on them, made it a point of honour,
and having, by a sickly season, been reduced to
fourteen, all these, except the Bishop of LandafFe,
refused compliance, and were degraded : but out of
the 10,000 parishes of England, only eighty vicars
and rectors, fifty prebendaries, fifteen heads of col-
leges, twelve archdeacons, and as many deans, sacri-
ficed their livings to their religious principles ; a fact
rendered more striking to us by a future one, — that
of the Presbyterian clergy, who had obtained livings
during the Commonwealth, and who, on the passing
of the Act of Uniformity again, on the restoration of

IN ALL AGES. 185

Charles II., resigned, to the number of 2000, in one
day, to the astonishment of even their enemies, who
had no notion of the existence of such high principle,
especially as they had not failed to tempt the most
able of these clergy with offers of deaneries and other
preferments, and to Baxter, Calamy, and Reynolds
bishoprics, — the last of whom only was weak enough
to accept it. It was chiefly, therefore, on the dis-
senters, and on the more conscientious clergy who
had been ejected from their livings in Mary's reign,
that the weight of persecution from the Ecclesiastical
Court fell. These were harassed with every possible
vexation. They were fined, imprisoned, and destroyed
without mercy. This state of things did not cease, ex-
cepting during the short interval of the Commonwealth,
till the Act of Toleration, in the reign of William III.
put an end to it, and gave to conscience some degree
of liberty. The Stuarts, who succeeded Elizabeth,
with far less talent than the Tudors, had all their love
of tyrannical power : and so incorrigible was this
principle in them, that it soon brought one of them to
the block ; made his son a fugitive for the greater
part of his life ; and, finally, notwithstanding the
good-natured relentings of the people, who had re-
stored his line to the throne, made them rise once
more, and drive the hopelessly despotic family from
the throne for ever.

But, before we quit Elizabeth, we must give some
clearer idea of her notion of a reformed church esta-
blishment. She insisted that the simpler forms and
doctrines of the church of Geneva should be avoided ;
and that a splendid hierarchy should be maintained
of archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deans, canons,
and other officials ; declared that the church of Rome
was a true church, and adopted most of its relics and

186 PRIESTCRAFT

ceremonies. Its festivals and holidays in honour of
saints were to be kept ; the sign of the cross was to
be used in baptism ; kneeling at the sacrament of the
Lord's supper ; bowing at the name of Jesus ; giving
the ring in matrimony ; confirmation of children by
episcopalian hands ; forbidding marriage at certain
seasons of the year ; and many other popish append-
ages were retained. The doctrine of the absolution
of sins, and the damnatory creed of Athanasius were
held fast; so that to many — except as to the marriage
of the clergy, auricular confession, and a less pompous
and ornate form of worship — little difference between
popery and the English church could be discerned;
and, to make the case still more intolerable, matters
of indifference, such as were neither commanded nor
forbidden by Scripture — as the external rites of wor-
ship, the vests of the clergy, religious festivals — were
put under the authority of the civil magistracy ; and
those who refused to conform to them were thus made
rebels to the state, and punishable accordingly. It
was impossible to conceive a more thorough extinc-
tion of the rights of the subject in affairs of con-
science— not in popery itself! The bishops having
thus got power into their hands, speedily proceeded
to exercise it, — to shew the old priestly spirit. In
1588, Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, declared
that the episcopal order were, by express appoint-
ment of God, superior to the presbyters, and that all
priests not ordained by bishops were spurious. This,
says Mosheim, was the form of religion established in
England, which laid the foundation for perpetual dis-
sensions and feuds in that otherwise happy and pros-
perous nation.

Such was the formation of the church of England !
such it remains to the present hour ! After such an

IN ALL AGES.

origin, can any one wonder that it needs reform,
thorough reform, not merely of its abuses, which are,
as might naturally be expected from so absurd and
despotic a constitution, become monstrous, but reform
and entire remodelling of its canons ? While all
around it has been progressing in knowledge and
better understanding of the rights of conscience, and
the true nature of Christianity, here has this eldest
daughter of popery been standing still in body,
covered with all her deformities, with the mark of the
beast blazing on her forehead, and the filthy rags of
cast-off popery fluttering about her ; and while every
clearer eye has been regarding this patchwork progeny
of priestcraft and barbarism with mingled wonder,
ridicule, and abhorrence, she has been hugging her-
self in the fond idea, that she was the queen of
beauty, and the perfection of holiness ! While the
civilized world has been moving about her, casting
off the mind, the manners, and the harsh tenets of
feudal rudeness, she has lain coiled up in the bright
face of advancing day, like some huge slimy dragon
cast up by the sea of ages, in the midst of a stirring and
refined city ; and has only exhibited signs of life by
waving her huge scaled tail in menace of her foes,
and by stretching out her ten-talented paws to devour
a tenth of the land. Can such a monster longer
encumber the soil of England ? As soon might we
expect St. George to come leading his dragon into
London, or Dunstan present the devil, pincered in
his fiery tongs, at the door of Lambeth palace.

Dissent was forced on the nation by the bigotry
of the rulers and the priests ; it was fanned into
inextinguishable flame by continual jealousies and
persecutions under every reign, till that of William
and Mary ; and in our own time, has, by the luke-
warmness of the established clergy, led to its extension

188 PRIESTCRAFT

tenfold in the new schism of the Methodists.* The
history of the Society of Friends is full of the most
singular persecutions on the part of the clergy, and
the magistracy incited by them. At one time, accord-
ing to Sewell, their historian, almost every adult of
this persuasion was in prison. At a very early
period of their association, two thousand four hundred
of them were incarcerated. From the time of their
rise to the very day of the passing of the Act of
Toleration, they were harassed and abused in all
possible manners. Their property was seized ; their
meetings forcibly scattered with rude soldiers and
the scum of the people; they were confined in the
most loathsome prisons, where many perished, from
hardships and severities of winter, and of men more
wintry than the elements. To escape from this state
of shameful and intolerable oppression, William Penn,
one of the greatest and most illustrious men which
this country ever produced, led out his persecuted
brethren to America, and there founded one of the
states of that noble country, which has now risen to
a pitch of prosperity which is the natural fruit of

* The sagacious mind of Milton, saw in his day the advantages
of that system which Wesley in ours has put so successfully into
operation. " Thus taught, once for all, and thus now and
then visited and confirmed in the most destitute and poorest
places of the land, under the government of their own elders,
performing all ministerial offices amongst them, they may be
trusted to meet and edify one another, whether in church or
chapel, or to save them the trudging of many miles thither,
nearer home, though in a house or barn. For, notwithstanding
the gaudy superstition of some still ignorantly devoted to tem-
ples, we may be well assured, that he who did not disdain to be
laid in a manger, disdains not to be preached in a barn ; and
that, by such meetings as these, being, indeed, most apostolical
and primitive, they will, in a short time, advance more in Chris-
tian knowledge and reformation of life, than by many years
preaching of such an incumbent, I may say such an incumbrance
oft-times, as will be merely hired to abide long in such places."

IN ALL AGES. 189

liberty ; and stands an every-day opprobrium of priest-
craft, and a monument not merely of the uselessness,
but the impolicy and nuisance of establishments. In
the new, but great cities of that vast empire — in the
depths of its eternal forests, and on its mountains
and its plains, that scorn to bear the scorching foot
of despotism, millions of free men, who have escaped
from the temporal and spiritual outrages of Europe,
lift up their voices and their hearts in thanksgivings
to Him who has given them a land wide as human
wishes, and as free as the air that envelopes it. They
have gone out from us to escape our cruelties and
indignities, and are become our practical teachers in
the philosophy of religion and government.

The English church, which has been so lauded by
its interested supporters, as a model of all that is
pure, dignified, holy, and compact, has not only thus
compelled dissent by its tyranny ; but by the consent
of all historians, has, from its commencement, been
composed like Nebuchadnezzar's image, of most ill
agreeing materials, mingled brass and clay ; and has
consequently been continually rent with differing
factions. The Tudors established popish rites, and
Edward ijc/introduced Calvinistic doctrines ; and
these, retained by Elizabeth and James I., Charles I.
by a singular inconsistency sanctioned, at the same
moment that, under the management of his domineer-
ing Archbishop Laud, he was carrying the claims of
episcopal power to the highest pitch, and would not
only force them upon the English, but on the Scotch.
This prelate, as complete a papist in spirit as any
that ever exercised despotism in the bosom of that
arbitrary church, has been much eulogised by good
men of the present day, who, themselves most amiable
in their own private circles, exhibit in their writings
too much of the harshness and the bigotry of the

190 PRIESTCRAFT.

middle ages to be agreeable in this. The opinion of
Hume has been often quoted in his favour ; let us
therefore see what Hume does say of him. " This
man was virtuous, if severity of manners alone, and
abstinence of pleasure, could deserve that name. He
was learned, if polemical knowledge could entitle
him to that praise. He was disinterested; but with
unceasing industry he studied to exalt the priestly
and prelatical character, which was his own. His
zeal was unrelenting in the cause of religion ; that is,
by imposing, by rigorous measures, his own tenets
and pious ceremonies on the obstinate puritans,
who had profanely dared to oppose him. In prose-
cution of his holy purposes, he overlooked every
human consideration ; or, in other words, the heat
and indiscretion of his temper made him neglect the
views of prudence, and rules of good manners. He
was in this respect happy, (how exactly the charac-
ter of some eminent men of this day!) — that all his
enemies were also imagined by him the declared
enemies of loyalty and true piety; and that every
exercise of his anger, by that means, became in
his eyes, a merit and a virtue. This was the man
who acquired so great an ascendant over Charles, and
who led him by the facility of his temper, with a
conduct which proved so fatal to himself and to his
kingdom." He adds, that, " in return for Charles's
indulgence towards the church, Laud, and his fol-
lowers took care to magnify, on every occasion, the
regal authority, and to treat with the utmost disdain
or detestation, all puritanical pretensions to a free
and independent constitution." At the same time,
he continues, that " while these prelates exalted the
kingly power, they took care to set the priestly still
higher, and endeavoured to render it independent of
the sovereign. They declared it sacred and inde

*

IN ALL AGES. 191

feasible ; all right to private judgment in spiritual
matters was denied to laymen ; bishops held spiritual
courts without any notice taken of the king's au-
thority ; and in short, rapid strides were made, not only
towards the haughty despotism of popery, but towards
it's superstitious acrimoniousness. Laud, in spite
of public opinion and private remonstrance, intro-
duced pictures into the churches, shifted the altar
back to its old papal standing, set up again the cru-
cifix, and advised that the discipline and worship of
the church should be imposed in all the colonies, and
in all the regiments and trading companies abroad,
and that no intimacy should be maintained with the
reformed churches of the continent. All his mea-
sures, in fact, tended to a most popish state of cere-
monies in worship, and tyranny and intolerance in
behaviour ; and if any one, after reading the following
account of his consecration of St. Catherine's church,
given by the same historian on the authority of
Wellwood, Rushworth, and Franklin, can see any
difference between him and a most thorough-going
papist, he has better eyes than I.

" ' On the bishop's approach to the west door of the
church, a loud voice cried, ' Open, open, ye ever-
lasting doors, that the king of glory may enter in.'
Immediately the doors of the church flew open, and
the bishop entered. Falling on-his knees, with eyes
elevated, and arms expanded, he uttered these words :
• This place is holy ; the ground is holy ; in the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
I pronounce it holy.

" ' Going towards the chancel, he several times took
up from the floor some of the dust, and threw it in
the air. When he approached, with his attendants,
near to the communion table, he bowed frequently
towards it ; and on their return, they went round the

192 PRIESTCRAFT

ehurch, repeating as they marched along, some of
Psalms, and said a form of prayer, which concluded
in these words — ' We consecrate this church, and
separate it unto Thee, as holy ground, not to be pro-
faned any more to common uses.'

" ' After this, the bishop standing near the commu-
nion table, solemnly pronounced many imprecations
upon such as should afterwards pollute that holy
place by musters of soldiers, or keeping in it profane
law courts, or carrying burdens through it. On the
conclusion of every curse, he bowed towards the east,
and said — ' Let all the people say, Ainen.'

" ' The imprecations being also piously finished,
there were poured out a number of blessings on all
such as had any hand in building and forming that
sacred and beautiful edifice ; and on such as had
given, or should hereafter give to it, any chalices,
plate, ornaments, or utensils. At every benediction
he in like manner bowed towards the east, and cried —
' Let all the people say, Amen.'

"'The sermon followed: after which the bishop
consecrated and administered the sacrament in the
following manner. As he approached the communion
table he made many lowly reverences ; and, coming
up to that part of the table where the bread and wine
lay, he bowed seven times. After the reading of
many prayers, he approached the sacramental ele-
ments, and gently lifted up the napkin in which the
bread was placed. When he beheld the bread, he
suddenly let fall the napkin, flew back a step or two,
bowed three several times towards the bread, then he
drew nigh again, opened the napkin, and bowed as
before.

" ■ Next he laid his hand on the cup, which had a
cover upon it, and was filled with wine. He let go
the cup, fell back, and bowed thrice towards it. He

IN ALL AGES. 193

approached again, and lifting up the cover, peeped
in. Seeing the wine, he let fall the cover, started
back, and bowed as before. Then he received the
sacrament, and gave it to others ; and, many prayers
being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended.
The walls and floor and roof of the fabric were then
supposed to be sufficiently holy."

The consequence of these ridiculous ceremonies
on the one hand, and severities on the other, — for
the English Inquisition, in the form of the High
Commission Court, and the Star Chamber, was in
full exercise, and many cruelties and iniquities were
continually practised in them on those who dared to
have an opinion of their own, — was, that Laud was
brought to the block,* and his sovereign was left
in that calamitous course of unsuccessful despotism
which actually brought him there, and deluged the
whole nation in blood* and tossed it in years of anar-
chy and crime. By these circumstances, however,
the church received, what Lord Chatham so expressly
designated in Parliament — a Popish Liturgy — a Cal-
vinistic Creed, and an Armenian Clergy.

The heterogeneous materials of the church shewed
conspicuously in the famous assembly of divines at
Westminster during part of Charles's reign and part

* It is pity that an archbishop like Land should be brought
to such an end ; because there are so much cheaper ways, and
more economical of human suffering than the real murder of
political enemies in the manner of Vane and Ney. But con-
siderations of this kind should hinder no man from discerning,
how entirely all that constitutes public and private freedom,
happiness, and honour, has been obtained by the conquest and
beating down, and is, in fact, the spoil of war carried off by the
subjection and trampling under foot of that political and eccle-
siastical party who have just received another mighty bruise ;
and of whom it has been truly said, that but for their successive
defeats, England would at this moment have been Spain, Por-
tugal, or Turkey. — Westminster Review, No. XXXIV.

o

194 PRIESTCRAFT

of the Commonwealth, in which the Geneva form of
worship was admitted by some of the most celebrated
bishops, amongst them Tillotson and Seldeni By
the accession of William another rent was made: part
of the hierarchy adhering to the Stuart line, refusing
to swear allegiance to the new dynasty, and thus
acquiring the name of Non-jurors, — splitting the
church into High-church and Low- church, — two par-
ties whose feuds and heart-burnings continued till
late years, when the sect of the Evangelicals has
appeared, to bear prolonged evidence to the inter-
nal destitution of the principles of cohesion in the
Establishment. These lean towards the Calvinistic
creed, which they justly assert is the strict, literal creed
of the church according to the Thirty-nine Articles ;
and advocate a reform in the manners, and a renewed
zeal in the spirit of the clergy. When we add to this
that whereas in other countries the church is under
the government of one deliberative body, and is in
this split into two houses of convocation, we have
before us a picture of unconnectedness that is per-
fectly amazing.

This is but a melancholy sketch of the history of
this celebrated church; but it is one so broadly,
copiously, and overwhelmingly delineated in the
annals of the nation at large, that it cannot be con-
troverted ; — a history, as that of every state religion
must be, of power usurping the throne of conscience ;
thrusting the spirit of the people from free address to,
and communion with their God; and in refusal of
obedience — an obedience more deadly and shameful
than the most outrageous resistance could possibly
be — following them with the fire and sword of exter-
mination ; or if that were not allowed, with the sneers
and taunts of contempt. Alas ! that such should be
the miserable results of that reformation which at

IN ALL AGES. 195

first promised such glorious fruits ; that the blood of
martyrs, and the fervid prayers and mighty exertions
of the noblest intellects, and holiest men, should be
spent so much in vain. v

But such ever has been, and ever will be the re-
sult of that great fundamental error, of linking in
unnatural union church and state ; of making the
church of Christ, who has himself declared that " his
kingdom is not of this world," a tool of ambitious
kings and rulers.

The nature of the Christian religion is essentially
free ; the voice of Christ proclaims to men — " the
truth shall make you free!" The spirit of Chris-
tianity is so delicate in its sensibility, that it shrinks
from the touch of the iron and blood-stained hand of
political rule ; it is so boundless in its aspirations,
and expansive in its energies, that it must stand on
the broad champaign of civil and intellectual liberty,
ere it can stretch its wings effectively for that flight
which is destined to encompass the earth, and end
only in eternity. And what has been the conse-
quence of attempting to chain this free spirit to the
car of state ? Why, that in its days of earlier union,
arbitrary power sought to quench in its own sacred
name, its own very life ! — pursued with fire, sword,
fetters, dungeons, and death, its primest advocates.
The history of dissent is full of these horrors : and
Ireland, in which the same system was pursued; and
Scotland, that sooner than submit to it, rose, and
stood to the death in many a mountain pass and
bloody valley, can testify to the same odious policy.
The oppressions and splendid resistance of the Scot-
tish Covenanters, — the bloody havoc made amongst
them by the soldiery of reformed kings and a re-
formed church ; and their undaunted and most pic-
turesque celebration of their own simple worship,

o 2

19(5 PRIESTCRAFT

lifting up their voices amid the rocks and desarts
whither they were driven for their adherence to their
religion, are well told by their own historians, but
have been made of immortal interest by Sir Walter
Scott. From the first to the last — from the accession of
James I. to the throne of England, to the expulsion
of James II. from that throne, a period of upwards
of eighty years, the Stuarts persisted in the most
tyrannical endeavours to force on their native coun-
try of Scotland the episcopal church; and, in con-
sequence, deluged that high-spirited and beautiful
country with blood. Many a solitary heath, many a
scene of savage rocks in that land, where the peasant
now passes by and only wonders at its wild silence, are
yet loud in the ear of heaven in eternal complaints
of the bloody and domineering deeds of the English
church, wrought by its advice and by the hireling
murderers of its royal head ; many a name — as Kil-
sythe, Killicranky, and Bothwell Bridge — will rise
up for ever in the souls of man against her. Does
she stand before us and call herself holy and meek,
and beneficent, with all these crimes, all these lives,
all this blood and misery on her head ? Well would
it have been for Ireland, well for England, well for
the Episcopalian Church itself, if some Jenny Geddes
had been found, as in Edinburgh, to launch her
three-legged stool at the head of the clergyman when
he began to deal out a state liturgy; and had been
followed by the simultaneous efforts of the whole
people, to teach kings and priests to respect the in-
alienable rights of conscience : but in default of this,
what has been the consequence ? While power was
left to the church, it persecuted, and would have
continued to persecute. The act of William III. put
an end to this ; and we must henceforth look for the
spirit of priestcraft in a different shape. The whole

IN ALL AGES. 197

course of this volume has shewn that this wily spirit
has conformed itself to circumstances. Where un-
limited power was within its grasp, it seized it with-
out hesitation, and exercised it without mercy. Egypt,
India, all ancient Asia, and all feudal Europe, are
witnesses of this. Where it could not act so freely,
it submitted to the spirit of the people ; and worked
more quietly, more unseen, but equally effectually as
in Greece and Pagan Rome. England, after Wil-
liam III., afforded no further scope for imprisonment,
the martyr's naming pile, or the bloody axe of the
public executioner. It was rapidly careering in a
course of knowledge and civilization, which made
men acquainted with their rights, and has eventually
lifted this nation to the proudest position ever occu-
pied by any people in the whole history of the world.
The established clergy, therefore, had nothing to do
but to secure the full enjoyment of their revenues,
and that parochial influence with which they were
invested ; and the consequence is that, in the noblest
nation of the earth, they have become the richest
body of priests and the most apathetic towards the
people, from whom their wealth is drawn. The
clergy, from these circumstances, have been long gra-
dually diverging into two classes, — one, sunk into
the slumberous bed of enormous wealth and gross
luxury; the other, into the miserable slough of in-
terminable toil and poverty. If we look at the dig-
nitaries of the church, and at the description of the
dignitaries of the papal church in its later days of
universal influence, can we avoid being struck with
the coincidence of character? " They pass their
days amidst the pleasures and cabals of courts ; and
appear rather the slaves of princes, than the servants
of Him whose kingdom is not of this world. They
court glory : they aspire after riches ; while very

198 PRIESTCRAFT

tew employ their time and labour in edifying the
people, or in promoting among them the vital spirit
of religion ; and, what is more deplorable, those
bishops who, sensible of the sanctity of their charac-
ter, and the duties of their office, distinguish them-
selves by zeal in the cause of virtue, are frequently
exposed to the malicious efforts of envy, often loaded
with false accusations, and involved in perplexities
of various kinds."

But it is not the bishops alone to whom this ap-
plies. These are the features of the establishment,
at least, as they appear in the eyes of the people at
large ; —

A clergy, in part, overpaid, and inactive ; in part,
overworked, and ill paid.

Loaded, in part, with opulent sinecures and shame-
ful pluralities ; the greater part doing the duty of
the lazy and the absent — on a paltry pittance.

Lukewarm in their duties ; and proudly cold in
their intercourse with the poor of their flocks.

A clergy, doggedly adhesive to the establishment
as it is, in spite of the progress of the public mind;
adhering to its most absurd, and most impolitic in-
stitutions, rites, and dogmas.

IN ALL AGES. 199

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Thrice happy days ! thrice blest the man who saw
Their dawn ! The Church and State, that long had held
Unholy intercourse, were now divorced !

Pollok's Course of Time, B. 4.

Forced consecrations out of another man's estate are no better
than forced vows, hateful to God, " who loves a cheerful giver;"
but much more hateful wrung out of men's purses to maintain a
disapproved ministry against their consciences.

Milton on Hirelings. *

So intolerable has the state of the church, described
in the conclusion of the last chapter, become, that
the public is, at this moment, loud in demanding its
reform ; and the clergy themselves, sensible that
reform is inevitable, with a wise policy, bend in some
degree to the popular opinion. Already the minis-
ters of a reformed government have published their
plan of reform for the church of Ireland, that mon-
strous excrescence, where a revenue of 800,000/.
according to the last clerical returns to Parliament,
but according to other calculations, little short
of 2,000,000/. is appropriated to a population of
500,000 protestants ; while 8,000,000 of catholics
not only help to support their establishment, but their

* A spirited publisher, who should at this crisis reprint this
most excellent pamphlet, would do a service to the public, and
most likely to himself.

200 PRIESTCRAFT

own priests. The proposed reform consists prin-
cipally in reducing the archbishoprics and bishoprics
from twenty-two to twelve ; in reducing the incomes of
the remaining ones ; in laying on a tax of fifteen per
cent, on the general income of the clergy ; in taking
off the church cess, or rate, from the people ; and in
selling off the lands of the extinguished bishoprics as
they fall out of lease. The Irish members of parlia-
ment have received this announcement with ecstasies
of delight. It is part of the Irish character to fly into
sudden raptures; but cool reflection will come yet;
and then — what will satisfy them? Why, nothing
short of the utter abrogation of protestant episcopacy
as a state religion. If it were necessary that a reli-
gion should be established, as it is called, it ought
here to be the catholic. The opinions of the majority
of a nation ought surely to command some respect ;
ought surely to be the guide in such matters. If a
nation is to patronize and support one religion in pre-
ference to another, it ought surely to be the religion of
the nation. The religion of Ireland is catholic, — the
religion of Scotland is presbyterian, — why should
Scotland be permitted to have a church of her own,
and Ireland be refused one 1 Why should the majo-
rity in the other parts of the empire decide the
establishment of their party, and in Ireland an
insignificant sect be thrust upon the people as the
national religion; and be bolstered up with tithes,
glebes, and wealth enormous ? These are plain
questions, and suggest a plain answer.

One circumstance connected with Irish church
reform is characteristic of its real nature and extent,
as proposed by the present ministers, and ought to
have opened the eyes of all men. The bishopric of
Derry, the most enormously endowed in Ireland, was
vacant at the very moment of the organization of this

IN ALL AGES. 201

plan of reform. If a number of bishoprics were to be
reduced, why should not this have been one ? Or if
it were not thought desirable to extinguish it, why
should not the incumbent of one of those sees which
were to be withdrawn, be translated to this, and thus
one at least have been instantly removed? The
surprise which the appointment of a bishop to this
see, under these circumstances created, was at once
dissipated ; and gave place, in the public mind, to
a higher surprise and a feeling of indignation, by
the discovery that the bishop thus installed, was Dr.
Poynton, the brother-in-law of Earl Grey! This
was an assurance sufficiently intelligible. Will a man
set himself heartily to cut down a tree in whose
topmost branches he has placed his brother ? Will a
man assay to sink a vessel in which he has embarked
his own family ? Will a general proceed cordially to
blow up a fortress in which his near relative is
commandant? Then, will Earl Grey set himself
heartily to work, to reform efficiently the Irish
church ! J

The abolition of this bishopric would have been a
thing of the highest importance. Its revenue, accord-
ing to the present return, is 13,000Z. ; and it is
proposed to reduce it to 8,000Z. But what is the
estimate of Mr. Wakefield of the value of this see ? —
a most competent authority. He calculates that the
whole of its property, over and above the tenth part
of the gross produce of the land, cannot be much
short of 3,000,000/. ; and that the bishop's land, at a
fair rate of rent, would produce an income of 130,000Z.
a year. This, then, is the birth into which Earl
Grey, in the face of a reformed parliament — of his own
professions of real reform — of suffering England, and
starving Ireland, has comfortably put his brother-in-
law, and proposes to satisfy the country by the

202 PRIESTCRAFT

abatement of 5,0OOZ. a year out of this immense
property. By the extinction of this bishopric alone,
a saving to the country would have been made at
once of 3,000,000/. ! — for the question in this case is,
not what the bishop actually derives from the land,
but what it is worth to the nation.

But the whole of this extraordinary establishment
of state religion is of a piece. For the government of
the whole church of England, twenty-six Archbishops
and Bishops exist — for 500,000 Irish protestants
there are twenty-two ! According to former returns,
there are 1,238 parochial benefices ; according to the
present, 1,401, in which are 860 resident clergymen.
To provide for these archbishops and bishops, who
superintend about as many people as one bishop in
England would very well manage, it is calculated
that out of 14,603,473 statute acres under cultiva-
tion, 13,603,473 are tithed. The glebe of the paro-
chial clergy varies from 300 to 40,000 acres. The
glebe in the diocese of Derry alone, amounts to more
than 17,000 acres. The glebes, indeed, it is cal-
culated in Derry and Kilmore would, if equally
divided, give twenty acres to every parish in Ireland.
Mr. Wakefield estimates that the property of six of
the bishops, when out of lease, would produce
580,000/. a year; — a sum which would give an
income of 500/. a year for each of the clergy, and
a fund for the establishment of a school in every
parish in Ireland. But if the property of six bishops
amount to 580,000/. a year, what becomes of the
clerical calculation which makes the whole income of
the Irish church but 800,000/. ? — leaving to the whole
body of parochial clergy and sixteen bishops little
more than 200,000/. ?

The following is an extract from the returns to the
House of Commons in February, 1824.

IN ALL

AGES.

203

Sees.

Acres.

Sees.

Acres.

Deny -

- - 94,836

Tuam - - -

49,281

Armagh

- - 63,470

Elphin - - -

31,017

Kilmore

- - 51,350

Clogher - -

32,817

Dublin -

- - 28,784

Cork and Ross

22,755

Meath -

- - 18,374

Cashel - - -

12,800

Ossory

- - 13,391

Killaloe - -

11,081

Total, 439,953 acres; which at 205. per acre, give
a rental of 439,953/.

If we estimate the remaining ten bishoprics at one-
third of the amount, there is 146,651, — a rental of
diocesan lands of 586,604/.

If we estimate the glebes at 100,000 acres, which
is, probably, far too little, when the glebe of Derry
alone exceeds 17,000 acres, and the parochial glebes
vary from 300 to 40,000 acres, at 20s., here is
100,000/.

The tithe of upwards of 13,000,000 acres, at only
2s., a tithe of the rental, not of the gross produce,
would be 1,300,000/. — making a total of income for
the Irish church, of 1,986,604/.

As women's fortunes are said to be paid in sixpences,
so when the incomes of the clergy are returned to
government, they seem to be calculated in farthings,
or something less. Tithe and glebe seem suddenly
to lose their natural value, surplice fees and fines
shrink into insignificance. Yet these fines are pretty
things, though they do not always amount to so much
as the present Bishop of Durham is stated, on the
authority of Mr. Beverly, to have received of Mrs.
Beaumont, for the renewal of the lease of her lead
mines— 72,000/. !

Now admitting, that owing to the low rate of
clerical leases, to waste land, to lay impropriation,
and to the popular inability or repugnance to pay

204 PRIESTCRAFT

tithes, the income of the church falls far below this
estimate, the question, so far as the country is con-
cerned, is the same. Here is a monstrous amount
of property appropriated to a certain purpose, and
what good is done ? What good, indeed, as it regards
Ireland? — A prodigious waste of property (for in
addition to all the rest, it appears that, at different
times since the Union, about half a million has been
voted to augment poor livings) only to render the
name of protestant hateful to that nation, by the
laziness, non-residence, and tithe-exactions of the
clergy of a church, which the Edinburgh Review,
some years ago, happily compared to an Irish regiment
of volunteers, which consisted of sixteen lieutenant-
colonels, two drummers, and one private ! The same
able journal has well remarked, that " whatever may
be the supposed effects of a richly endowed church
in maintaining a particular creed, it is evidently not
the machine for the conversion of a people."

The justice and intelligence of the British people
cannot long, therefore, be satisfied with lopping off a
few enormities from such a system ; they will demand
its total extinction. Religion, and the best objects of
all human government, demand it ! For, if pro-
testantism is to prosper in Ireland, it must not come
before the people in the shape of a corporation, char-
tered in opposition to the predominant feelings of the
country, and endowed with a vast portion of the
people's wealth; it must not come in the shape of
two and twenty archbishops and bishops to super-
intend some few hundred clergymen, on incomes of
10,000/. a year; in the shape of tithe-fed clergymen
without parishes, parishes without churches, and
churches without people ; in the shape of men who
profess to be teachers of Christian meekness and love,
but are seen only as zealous collectors of tithes ; in

IN ALL AGES. 205

the shape of tithe-proctors, with troops of soldiery at
their heels; in the shape of noon-day exaction and
midnight retaliation and revenge ; in short, of wealth
and violence on the one hand, and destitution and
despair on the other; — but if it come really to
prosper and to bless, it must come as Christ himself
came, — as a free personification of disinterested kind-
ness ; zealous love for the souls of men, rather than
their purses ; active endeavour to soothe the irritation
and enlighten the minds of the poor; it must be
offered to men's hearts, but not thrust upon their
shoulders; it must stand before the public eye as a
thing to be chosen, or refused; as a thing which
invites observation, and can bear it ; as a thing which
obviously has no interest but what is blended with
the whole happiness of man ; — whose nobility is so
striking, and its beauty so attractive/ that hearts are
drawn to its embraces, not crushed beneath its tread.
The system of compulsion and lavish endowment has
been tried long enough ; long enough has state reli-
gion, to use Burke's sophistical metaphor, " reared
its mitred front in courts and parliaments," its effects
are before the public in characters of fire and blood !
Instead of peace, we have horrible anarchy — instead
of the milk of human kindness, deadly exasperation
and relentless murder — in God's name let us see
what the system of the apostles will now do ! — a free
offer, — an open hand, — and a zealous heart! — a
system less of the bag and scrip, than of virtues and
arguments that address themselves to the wants, the
understanding, and the generosity of a generous
nation.

To come now to England. The dissenters, now a
great and important body of people — a people alive to
their civil and religious rights, must be relieved from
church-rates. Ministers have acknowledged the justice

206 PRIESTCRAFT

of this demand, by already proposing to abolish them
in Ireland — the principle in ooth cases is the same.
The Irish cess, it appears, produces only about 94,000/.
What the dissenters pay in the shape of church-rates,
Easter offerings, etc., I do not know — the sum must
be enormous ; but I do know that the Society of
Friends, a comparatively small body, suffers the
violence and vexation of distraint of their goods, for
such things, to the amount of about 14,000/. a-
year; and these people maintain their own religion,
and their own poor.

That English dissenters should be compelled to
contribute to the support of an established church, is
a moral and political absurdity. By the Act of
Toleration of King William, the rights of conscience
are recognised : but by this compulsion all the rights
of conscience are violated. In the words of the able
writer from whom I have taken the motto at the
head of the last chapter — " A government cannot
patronize one particular religion without punishing
others. A state has no wealth but the people's
wealth. If it pay some, it impoverishes others." To
tell us that we may all enjoy our own opinions,
and celebrate our own worship in perfect freedom ;
and yet to compel us to support another mode of
religion, and another set of opinions, in our eyes
erroneous and unchristian, is at once an oppres-
sion and a bitter mockery. It is not so much the
sum of actual money that we pay which constitutes
the grievance, — that might be borne ; but the grava-
men lies here, — that by supporting an establishment,
we support what, in the abstract, both religiously
and politically, we believe ought not to exist. We
believe it is the duty of a government, and espe-
cially of a Christian government, which acknow-
ledges the sacred rites of conscience, to protect every

IN ALL AGES. 207

modification of the Christian religion; but not to
support one in preference to, and at the expense of
the rest. This is not to patronize religion, but a
party. That an establishment, unjust and impolitic
in itself, never can, and never has, promoted true
religion, is shewn abundantly by this volume ; it is
testified equally by the apathy of the established
church, and the activity of the dissenters. Is it not
a source of continual complaints and bitterness
amongst clerical writers, that the dissenters are for
ever intruding themselves into their parishes ; and,
with what they are pleased to term their fiery fanati-
cism, continually turn the heads of their parishioners,
and seduce them to the conventicle ? Now whether
this zeal be healthful or not, whether it be pure or
alloyed, refined or coarse, rational or fanatic, it mat-
ters not to our present question, — it is zeal, — and
the vital question is, whence does it arise ? how is it
maintained ? Not, certainly, from a state establish-
ment ! — not by charters and endowments. It springs
from the soul of the people, and asks no breath of
life but their approbation. Here, then, is an acknow-
ledged principle of religious propagation, more effica-
cious than all the boasted influence of canonicals and
mitres ; of cathedral piles and sounding orchestras ; of
all the political machinery of tithes, and glebes, and
church-rates, and forced payments, called by the
sarcastic name of gifts and offerings, as if the imposi-
tion were not enough, but we must suffer the mockery
of being placed in the light of free donors and bowing
offerers of gifts at a shrine that we inwardly abhor.
Here is a confessed power to keep alive the popular
zeal for religion ; — if that zeal wants better guidance,
it becomes every good man to lend his hand to its
due direction, — but the principle itself is indisputably
manifested, and sets the seal for ever to the non-

208 PRIESTCRAFT

necessity, and therefore to the political oppression, of
a state religion. Nothing could justify a state reli-
gious establishment but the total and proven impos-
sibility of keeping alive Christianity without it ; but
here it is seen that religious zeal rather takes any
other form than that stamped upon it by legal enact-
ments. Like the acanthus, pressed under the tile, it
rises up with unquenchable vitality all around, and
not only buries the dead tile of policy under its
vigorous vegetation, but gives origin to new orders
of Christian architecture. While the zeal of the
established clerical order languishes under the weight
of good things which its friends have cast upon it ;
while bishoprics, and deaneries, and prebends cannot
stimulate it to the vital point of proselytism ; while
tithes, and glebes, and fines, and parochial fees can-
not enliven it, the free breath of popular societies
can blow it into a flame that spreads far and wide,
and even scorches the canonical skirts of the state
clergy. Who, after this, shall dare to repeat the
stale sophism that Christianity needs the arm of
human legislation to support her, — that she must be
perched on cathedral pinnacles to be fairly seen ; that
she must be wrapped in alb or surplice, and crowned
with shovel-hat or mitre to be reverenced, and seated
on the episcopal throne to be adored? Who shall
dare to turn his eye on the United States of America,
where there is no state religion, yet where Christianity
flourishes not less than amongst us, and then attempt
to palm upon us the canting and selfish falsehood,
that religion is bound up in the bundle of life with an
Act of Parliament ?

By compelling us to support an established reli-
gion, we are compelled to support and propagate all-
its errors, its injustice, and its absurdities, however
great, and numerous, and pernicious they may be.

IN ALL AGES. 209

Every sect in England at present, in contributing to
the establishment, contributes to that which it abhors.
The denouncer of episcopacy is made to maintain a
whole hierarchy of bishops ; the Catholic, what he
declares to be pestilent heresies of the most damnable
sort ; the Calvinist maintains Arminianism ; the Ar-
minian, Calvinism ; for, in the church are combined
" a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy." The
Friend, who believes all hierarchies antichristian,
who holds that all ministers should speak from the
immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, and abomi-
nates hireling ministers, written sermons, a cut-and-
dried liturgy, and half the doctrines of the church to
boot, is forced, by distraint of his goods, to feed and
uphold all these enormities : every man is made to
maintain the doctrine of priestly absolution, for the
church maintains it ; and every man is made most
heartily to damn himself, for the Athanasian creed,
which is one of the creeds of the church, does declare
every man to be damned who doubts it.

Such a preposterous abuse of power never can be
much longer tolerated in this country. The church-
rates must be abolished, and with them tithes. The
removal of this last burden is now so universally ,
deemed necessary, that I shall not say many words
upon it. Tithes are politically condemned, and will !
disappear for ever. A more ingenious method could
not have been devised for the support of a minister of
religion, had it been the object of the deviser to place
an eternal object of hatred, heart-burning, and dispute
between him and his flock ; to place him in the position
of a harpy over the table of every one of his hearers ;
and to thus render abortive all his religious endea-
vours. A more iniquitous one never was conceived, —
for it taxes not simply a man's land, but his capital,
his genius, his skill, and industry ; so~tnat the priest

210

PRIESTCRAFT

reaps not merely a tithe of the fruits of the earth, but
of the fruits of every man's heart and mind who ven-
tures to till the earth. But they are condemned : and
let them go, with this one observation of Milton's —
" As well under the Gospel as under the law — say
our English divines, and they only of all Protestants
— is Tithes. That the law of tithes is in force under
the Gospel, all other Protestant divines, though
equally concerned, yet constantly deny. When any
one of our's has attempted, in Latin, to maintain
this argument, — though a man would think they
might suffer him, without opposition, in a point
equally tending to the advantage of all ministers — yet
they cease not to oppose him, as in a doctrine not fit
to pass unopposed under the gospel; which shews
the modesty, the contentedness of those foreign
pastors with the maintainance given them; their
sincerity also in truth, though less gainful, and the
avarice of ours, who, through the love of their old
papistical tithes, consider not the weak arguments, or
rather conjectures and surmises which they bring to
defend them." What a striking fact is this! and
what a singular feature it presents of the English
church — the only one that has advocated and suffered
itself to be fed by this iniquitous system of tithes ! If
we add to this the following paragraph, which ap-
peared in the Essex Independent, and the principle of
which, whatever the calculations may be, is notoriously
correct, what an image of clerical rapacity and want
of conscience we have before us ! " The church ought
to relinquish the property of the poor. The original
tripartite division of tithes is acknowledged —one-
third portion of the revenue of the church being the
undoubted property of the poor. The entire pos-
sessions of the church, in tithe and landed property,
amount in value to the sum of 170,450,000/. ; and the

extensive leaseholds lately reverted to the bishopric
of London, raise the amount to 180,000,000/. One-
third of this, 60,000,000/., is therefore the sum which
the state is most equitably entitled to demand from
the church." After reading this, who can prevent
himself recalling the words of Christ — " The poor ye
have always with you, but me ye have not always!"

In the next place, the church must be divorced
from the state. This unnatural union, the device of
artful politicians, is an injustice to the subject, and
an indignity to the church itself. The natural effect
upon a church in becoming a state religion is, that its
freedom is instantly extinguished ; every principle of
progression and improvement is annihilated ; and the
generous spirit which would lead it to expand, and
spread itself abroad on the kindred spirits of men, is
frozen by the cold breath of worldly policy. Like
metal molten in the furnace, it flows into the state as
into a mould, receives its shape and stamp, and sets
for ever. It may be dashed to pieces by the appli-
cation of external force ; but, last as long as it may,
it will never be moved, remodelled, or purified from
within. It becomes stationary for ever. However
all around may be quickened with the moving spirit
of knowledge, and excited to activity and fruitful-
ness, it stands silent and barren, — like a tree covered
with the knots and burs of antiquated absurdities ; its
head, a chaos of rotten boughs amid the green vigour
of the forest; and while it is insensibly falling to
decay, it bears itself with a sturdy and sullen pride,
and wears a ludicrous air of superiority in the very
moment of its fall. That such is the situation of the
establishment, who can deny? — Who that calls to
mind its doctrine of absolution of sins ; its Athanasian
creed, — a thing so monstrous as to horrify and make
ashamed the best minds of its own sons, and which

r 2

212 PRIESTCRAFT

compelled Tillotson long ago, to wish they were well
rid of it; and, moreover, its Thirty-nine Articles,
that precious medley of follies and contradictions, —
a medley, however, which every one, owing to the
inflexible nature of the church, is obliged to swallow
before he can be ordained a minister ; and which Paley,
after acknowledging that it was a Gordian-knot, en-
deavoured to cut asunder, by declaring these articles
articles of peace ; as if it would enable men to escape
the guilt of falsehood, by treating bitter and con-
tradictory professions of faith as physic, and swallow-
ing them as a necessity 1 These articles lie at the
door of the church as a threshold of lying; and if
perjury does not depend on a form of words, but on
the inward denial of a solemn truth, — of perjury to
every one of its ministers who is not wild enough to
believe impossibilities; and in one university stand
in the way of every student. The great Jeremy
Bentham, one of the noblest, as well as most sagacious
minds which ever blessed earth by its presence, has
left on record what it cost him to subscribe them ; and
numberless are the conscientious spirits which have
turned away from them in disgust. Yet there they
stand at the church-door, in all their glorious con-
trariety, and would for ever stand while the church
was a member of the state.

When a church stands on its own simple basis, it
may renovate its constitution; it may explode worn-
out creeds ; abandon dogmas or rites that have become
hideous in the increased light of universal knowledge,
and preserve itself in keeping with the spirit of the age,
and in consequent capacity for usefulness ; but, make
it a portion of the state, and it immediately becomes
a species of high treason to attempt the least change
in it. Make its ministers illustrious with dignities,
and fat with good livings, and they will for ever cry

IN ALL AGES. 213

"great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The church
will be the best of churches, — immaculate and divine ;
and they will growl on any one who even dares to
look curiously at it, as a jealous dog growls over his
bone. Make it the road to political power and
honour, and you make its highest ministers the most
obsequious slaves of state ; the most relentless enemies
of freedom and mercy.* This has been too con-

* The bulk of the incidents in the history of priestcraft, are
bloody and revolting; but there are a few that are the very
fathers of merriment. When Tetzel was selling indulgences in
Germany for all sins past, present, and to come, and had well
filled his saddle-bags with the money of pious fools of that
generation, and was about to depart, a nobleman called on him
to procure one for a future crime. Tetzel inquired what it was.
The nobleman replied, he could not tell — he had not yet quite
decided ; but the holy father could charge what he pleased, and
leave that to him. Tetzel charged accordingly ; and the next
day as he was riding through a wood in order to leave the coun-
try, the nobleman met him, and seized on his saddle-bags.
"This," said he, "is the sin I meant to commit!" Tetzel
enraged at being thus outwitted, hastened back to the emperor
full of wrath and complaints ; but when the nobleman appeared,
it was with the indulgence in his hand which sanctioned the deed.

Waller, in his life, gives a curious instance of prelatical
obsequience, which most miraculously was well met, by a
brilliant instance of prelatical wit and independence. At a
dinner with James I., were Neal, bishop of London, and
Andrews, bishop of Winchester — "Have not I a right," said
James," to take money from the people, without all this ceremony
of going to parliament ? " Undoubtedly your majesty has a
right," replied Neal — "you are the breath of our nostrils!"
" But what says my lord of Winchester?" added James. " I
say," returned the bishop, " that your majesty has a right to take
brother Neal's ; for he has given it you."

Bloody Mary sent a commissioner over to Ireland, with a
royal commission to the lord lieutenant to burn, destroy, and
confiscate the property of the protestants, and bring them to what
is called, justice. The man lodging at a widow Edmonds', in
Chester, was waited on by the mayor; to whom he boasted that
he had that with him that would bring the Irish heretics to their
senses, and opening a box, he shewed him the commission. The

214 PRIESTCRAFT

spicuous in the house of peers. Lord Eldon said
some years ago, in the house of lords, that he could
not bring himself to believe the slave trade was
irreconcileable with the Christian religion, as the bench
of bishops had uniformly sanctioned by their votes,
the various a,cts authorizing that trade. A biting
sarcasm, which ever way intended !*

Let us now hear our noble Milton, on the effect of
a state religion. " That the magistrate should take
into his power the stipendiary maintainance of church
ministers, as compelled by law, can stand neither with
the people's thought, nor with Christian liberty, but
would suspend the church wholly upon the state, and
turn the ministers into state pensioners. For the
magistrate to make the church his mere ward, as
always in minority; — the church, to whom he ought,
as a magistrate, ' to bow down his face towards the
earth, and lick up the dust of her feet/ — her to sub-
ject to his political drifts, or conceived opinions, is
neither just, nor pious ; no honour done to the

widow, who had a brother in Ireland, a protestant, happened to
hear this, and was alarmed. As the commissioner shewed the
mayor down stairs, she adroitly withdrew the commission, and sup-
plied its place with a sheet of paper, in which was wrapped a pack
of cards, with the knave of clubs uppermost. The deception was
undiscovered. On the commissioner's arrival at Dublin, he had
an audience of the lord lieutenant, in the presence of a splendid
assembly. He made a fine speech, and boasted much of his
powers, when on going to produce his commission, behold, to
the astonishment of himself and his hearers, nothing but the
pack of cards, and the knave of clubs uppermost. " It was the
queen's commission," said the crest-fallen delegate, "but how it is
changed I know not." " Well," said the lord lieutenant, "you
must return to England for fresh powers, and in the meantime
we will shuffle the cards !" He returned; but he was too late
the queen was dead ; and on the subject being related to Eliza-
beth, she was highly diverted by it, andsettled on Mrs. Edmonds
401. a year.

* Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3\st, 1813.

IN ALL AGES. 215

church, but a plain dishonour : and upon her whose
head is in heaven, — yea upon him who is the only
head in effect ; and what is most monstrous, a human
on a heavenly, a carnal on a spiritual, a political head
on an ecclesiastical body ; which at length, by such
hetrogeneal, such incestuous conjunction, transforms
her ofttimes into a beast of many heads, and many
horns."

Such a beast has the church become by this state
commerce, even by the confession of her friends ; and
that commerce must be annihilated. Justice, im-
partial justice, to this great and Christian nation
demands it ; the growth of Christianity demands it ;
the prosperity of the church itself demands it as well.
This is a measure called for on behalf of the nation ;
and there are numbers who will contend that, the
church ceasing to be a state church, should restore its
property to the nation whence it was drawn. That
in strict justice all national property should revert to
the nation when the object for which it was bestowed
ceases, there can be no question ; in strict justice to
the other Christian communities of this country, this
ought clearly to be the case, — since, admitting the
rights of conscience, the nation ought not to enrich
one body of Christians at the expense of the rest; and
that parliament has a right to recall the loan of church
property is clear as daylight. The present priest-
hood form a standing proof and precedent of it, since
it was taken from the Catholics and given to them.
For my part I am perfectly easy to leave these matters
in the hands of parliament ; so that its wealth undergo
a further process of distribution ; its enormous salaries
be broken down ; its pluralities exploded ; its sine-
cures abolished; and its labouring multitude more
efficiently remunerated.

21G

PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Oh ! said the hind, how many sons have you
Who call you mother, whom you never knew?
But most of them who that relation plead
Are such ungracious youths as wish you dead ;
They gape at rich revenues which you hold,
And fain would nibble at your grandame gold.
Hind and Panther.

He is the true atheist, the practical enemy to religion, who cai
offer to defend the present condition of the Church of England.
Westminster Reviexv, No. xxix.

Having in the last chapter touched on the subject of
the church revenue, we must not leave it without
adverting to one particular. Whenever the excess
of clerical income is introduced, we are immediately
attempted to be disarmed by a statement that were
the whole revenue of the church equally divided, it
would give but about 112/. per annum to each clergy-
man. The British or Clerical Magazine for March,
1832, admits, from the Parliamentary Returns, that
it would be 200/. per annum.* Now did we admit
this to be correct, what a shame is it that in a church
so economically provided, so many individuals should
be allowed to wallow in the wealth and idleness they
manage to combine. Can the church answer it to

* The present Parliamentary Returns make it about 287/.

IN ALL AGES. 217

her conscience, if she have one, that in such a slen-
derly beneficed system, there should be many a
parish priest who holds from 1 to 5,000/. a year, and
that the scale of payment to its dignitaries should
stand thus, according to their own shewing : —

Archbishop of Canterbury £27,000 a year.
York . . 10,000 —

Bishop of Durham

London

Winchester

Ely

17,000

14,000
14,000
12,000

Nine others on an average 5,000 — v
The rest on an average . 3,000 —

I am afraid we never can prove the church to be
poor, or to have been at any time indifferent to the
doctrine, that " godliness is great gain." There is
nothing in which the spirit of priestcraft has shewn
itself so grossly in the English clergy, as in their
appropriation of what is called Queen Anne's Bounty.
The most shameful selfishness and disregard of every
thing like common honesty, like feeling for their
poorer brethren, or respect for the motives of the
deluded queen, mark the whole affair. The Edin-
burgh Review, in an able article in No. LXXV., made
a very salutary exposition of this wretched business.
Let the reader take this condensed view of it : —

" It is well known that, by the statute of Henry
VIII. chap. 3, the first-fruits and tenths of spiritual
preferments (which had formerly been paid to the
Pope, or some other spiritual persons) were given to
the king. The first-fruits were the revenues and
profits for one year, of every such preferment, and
were to be satisfied, or compounded for, on good
security, by each incumbent, before any actual or real
possession, or meddling with the profits of a benefice.

218 PRIESTCRAFT

The tenths were a yearly rent of a tenth part of all the
revenues and emoluments of all preferments, to be
paid by each incumbent at Christmas. These re-
venues were, as the statute phrases it, united and
knit to the imperial crown for ever ! By the same
statute a provision was made for a commission to be
issued by the king's highness, his heirs and succes-
sors, from time to time, to search for the just and true
value of the said first-fruits and profits ; and similar
means were provided for ascertaining the value of
tenths. In consequence of this statute, which was
suspended during the papistical reign of Mary, but
recovered by the 1st of Elizabeth, a valuation was
made, which is supposed to have been at the time an
accurate one, of the yearly profits of the ecclesiastical
preferments : and, according to this valuation, the
first-fruits and tenths were, as the 1st of Elizabeth
has it, ' well and justly answered and paid, without
grief and contradiction of the prelates and clergy of
the realm, to the great aid, relief, and supportation of
the inestimable charges of the crown,' which inesti-
mable charges may then possibly have amounted to a
two-hundredth part of the present yearly sum.

" Under this valuation, which in course of time
became quite unequal to the real emoluments of the
preferments, these charges continued to be paid till
the second year of Queen Anne, 1703 ; when an act
was passed reciting the queen's most religious and
tender concern for the church of England, stating
that a sufficient settled provision for the clergy in
many parts of the realm had never yet been made ;
and giving to a corporation, which was to be erected
for the augmentation of small livings, the whole of
the first-fruits and tenths. Her Majesty, however,
in her religious and tender concern, was completely
overreached by the clergy. The professed object of

IN ALL AGES. 219

the queen was to increase the provision of the poor
clergy ; the real and only immediate effect of it was
to release the rich clergy from a charge to which, by
law, they were liable. We have before maintained
that a provision was made in the statute of Henry
VIII, for revising, from time to time, the valuations
under which the first-fruits and tenths were paid. It
is not improbable that the clergy were apprehensive,
as the nation was then engaged in an expensive war,
that such a revision might be made ; and in per-
suading the queen to renounce her hereditary revenue
for the sake of her poor clergy, they contrived most
effectually to secure themselves by an ingenious clause
in the statute in question.

" If the real purpose of this act of Anne had been
to augment the small livings, nothing could have
been more reasonable than to do it by enforcing
the legal claims for the first-fruits and tenths on the
holders of the larger benefices. The scandalous
poverty of some livings — for there were then 1071
which did not exceed 10Z. a year — would then have
speedily disappeared : but, as the old and inefficient
rate of payment was fixed and made perpetual, the
most religious queen went to her grave without seeing
any effect from her bounty ; as, in consequence of
the incumbrances on the fund, and the impossibility
of increasing its produce, it was not till 1714 that the
governors of the bounty were enabled to make their
first grants.

" The cunning of the rich clergy in thus shifting
from themselves the burden of contributing to the
relief of their poorer brethren, is only to be matched
in degree by the folly shewn in the application of the
diminished revenue which this trick of theirs still left
for the improvement of small livings. At the time
when Queen Anne's Bounty Fund was established

220 ritlESTCRAFT

there was, according to the returns, which were not
quite accurate, 5597 livings in England and Wales
with incomes not exceeding 50/. They were thus
classed : —

Not exceeding 10/ 1071

20/.
30/.
40/.
50/.

1467
1126
1049

886

" The sum which the Governors of Queen Anne's
Bounty had to apply to the augmentation of these
livings, averaged about 13,000/. a year. Any
rational being would suppose that, under such cir-
cumstances, the governors and the legislature, by
whom the disposal of the money was directed and
superintended, would have made some inquiry into
the circumstances of the different livings. Some of
these livings were of very small extent, and scarcely
any population, and might therefore have been ad-
vantageously united with one another, or with other
parishes. The specific evil which was to be remedied
was set forth in the preamble to the statute of Anne
in these words : — ' That diverse mean and stipendiary
preachers are, in many places, entertained to serve
cures, and officiate there ; who, depending for their
necessary maintenance upon the good-will and liking
of their hearers, have been, and are, thereby under
temptation of too much complying, and suiting their
doctrines and teaching to the humours, rather than
the good of their hearers, which has been a great
occasion of faction and schism.' Precious philo-
sophy ! At least, therefore, one would have thought
that some distinction would have been made between
places where there were many hearers, and where
there were few or none. Some even, might have
been so extravagant as to expect, that when a sum

IN ALL AGES. 221

was bestowed on any particular living, some security
would have been taken for the residence of the incum-
bent. All these notions were, however, very far
from the minds of the persons who had the distribu-
tion of Queen Anne's Bounty. The governors of
this fund proceeded upon the idea which is commonly
entertained in England respecting the church esta-
blishment; especially by its own functionaries — that,
provided a sufficient sum of money be laid out on the
clergy, every other good will follow : that, how
absurd soever the distribution may seem, it is not for
human hands to destroy the latent harmony of casual
proportions. Above all things did they eschew the
idea, which the church abhors, that where the public
confers an obligation, it has a right to exact the
performance of a duty. Among the livings on
which they had to scatter the money, several were
large and populous parishes, where the tithes had
been impropriated ; and these, if the holders of the
tithes were not, as is often the case, ecclesiastical
sinecurists — or dignitaries as they are called — whose
incomes were at the disposal of Parliament, would
have been proper objects for augmentation, — always
supposing, what is false in point of fact, that an
increase in the emoluments of a living has any ten-
dency to secure the performance of clerical duties.
Others were rectories, of which some were endowed
with the tithe of all the produce of their district, but
which were so insignificant as neither to need a sepa-
rate clergyman, nor to afford a separate maintenance
for him. In the case of such livings, instead of
attempting to swell the incomes of needless offices,
the natural course would have been, to have consoli-
dated their neighbouring benefices, and in no case
have made any augmentation, except where the
revenue arising from a district of extent and popu-

222 PRIESTCRAFT

lation sufficient to need the cares of a clergyman,
should have been found insufficient to maintain him.
But this would have violated the fundamental prin-
ciples of the excellent Church ; it would have insi-
nuated a connexion between money expended and
duty performed ; it would have seemed like an adapt-
ation of means to an end ; it would have made some
inquiry and consideration necessary.

" The governors of the Bounty proceeded bounti-
fully ; they distributed a part of their money in sums
of 200/. on any poor livings to which any private
person would give an equal sum. The rest, and far
greater part of their money, shewing them no respecter
of persons nor of circumstances, these representatives
of the ecclesiastical wisdom of the nation, distributed
by lot, letting each poor living take an equal chance
for a prize, without any regard to the degree of
urgency of its claim. After this, the story of Bridoye
deciding suits at law by dice, after making up a fair
pile of papers on each side, seems no longer an extra-
vaganza. Up to January 1, 1815, the governors had
made, in this way, 7323 augmentations of 200/. ; but
with benefices as with men, fortune is not propor-
tioned to desert or necessity. Some of the least
populous parishes had a wonderful run of luck. We
are not sure that, taking a few of those which meet
our eye in running over the returns, we have selected
the most remarkable. In the diocese of Chichester,
the rectory of Hardham, which in 1811 contained
eighty-nine persons, has received six augmentations
by lot, or 1200/. The vicarage of Sollington, with
forty-eight people, has had six augmentations, 1200/.
In the diocese of Salisbury, Brewilham drew a prize ;
it contained fourteen people. Rotwood drew an-
other; it had twelve people. Calloes had 1000/. in-
cluding a benefaction of 200/. ; its population was in

IN ALL AGES. 223

1811, nineteen. In the diocese of Winchester, Saint
Swithin, with twenty-four people, has received 800/.
including a benefaction of 2001. ; and 200/. has been
expended on Ewhurst, which has seven people. In
the diocese of York, Ruthewick, with sixty -two
people, has had five prizes, 1000/.; while Armby,
with 2941 people, and Allendale, with 3884, have
gained only one each. In the diocese of Rochester,
two livings, with twenty-eight and twenty-nine
people, received separate augmentations. In the
diocese of Oxford, Elford, or Yelford, with sixteen
inhabitants, drew a prize. In Lincoln, Stowe, with
the same number, and Haugh, received 800/. The
number of all its inhabitants is eight. When it is
considered too, that Haugh pays vicarial tithes, which
amounted in the reign of Henry VIII, to 61. 13s. 4d.
of yearly value, it must be admitted that this im-
portant district has been guarded against the danger
of schism, with a liberality worthy of a Protestant
government. If the rest of the people of England
were fortified in sound doctrine, at the same rate of
expense, the proper establishment of religious teachers
in England and Wales would cost about 1200 mil-
lions sterling, and 1,500,000 parochial clergy, who,
as Dr. Cove allows each of them a family of nine,
would form a considerable portion of the population.
In the diocese of Landaff we find two places follow-
ing each other in the returns, which illustrate the
equity of le sort des dez. Usk, with 1339 people,
has had an augmentation, though its value remains
low. Wilcock, a rectory with twenty-eight people,
has had three. In Hereford, Hopton-Cangeford has
had 1000/. for thirty-five people. Monmouth, 200/.
for 3503.

" Even in cities, where the scattered condition of
the population could afford no pretext against the

224 PRIESTCRAFT

union of parishes, the same plan of augmentations
has been pursued. In Winchester, separate aug-
mentations have been given to seven parishes, the
population of all which would, united, have amounted
to 2376, and would consequently have formed a very
manageable, and rather small town parish. In short,
the whole of the returns printed by the house of
commons in 1815, No. 115, teem with instances of
the most foolish extravagance, — just such a result as
the original conception of this clerical little-go would
have led any rational being to anticipate. The con-
viction is irresistibly forced upon us, that nothing
could have been further from the minds of those who
superintended this plan, than to secure a competent
provision for all the members of the church, and to
remove the poverty of some of its members, — which
is, by a strange manner of reasoning, made a defence
for the needless profusion with which the public
wealth is lavished upon others. Indeed, we are led
to suspect, that * the church, in her corporate capa-
city,' looks upon the poverty of some of her members
as sturdy beggars look upon their sores ; she is not
seriously displeased with the naked and excoriated
condition of her lower extremities, so long as it
excites an ill-judged compassion for the whole body,
and secures her impunity in idleness and rapacity.

" We are sometimes told that the poverty of a
large body of the parochial clergy is such that it is
out of the power of the higher clergy, even by the
surrender of their whole revenues, to remedy it. The
statement we have given shows most clearly that this
poverty is to be attributed, in the first place, to the
fraudulent subtraction of the higher clergy from the
burden of contributing to the relief of their poorer
brethren ; and, in the second place, to the absurdity

IN ALL AGES. 225

on the slightest effort of the clergy, would have been
remedied by the legislature. If the first-fruits and
tenths had been paid subsequently to the gift of
Anne, according to the rate which the law provided
for, and as they had been paid, 'without grief or
contradiction,' i. e. according to the real value of the
benefices, instead of a million and half, at least 30
millions would have been raised from these taxes ; —
a sum not only quite sufficient to have removed the
poverty of all the poor livings in the kingdom, but to
have established schools in every parish of England,
and to have left a large surplus for other useful
purposes.

" In the course of these augmentations no security
has been taken against non-residence, or plurality.
The governors go on, therefore, increasing the incomes
of two small livings, in order to make each of them
capable of supporting a resident clergyman ; while
after, as well as before the augmentation, one incum-
bent may hold them together — reside on neither — and
allow only a small part of the accumulated income to
a curate, who performs the duty of both !"

This absurd system, which is at once an insult to
the memory of Queen Anne, and to the whole British
nation, has been continued to the present moment.
By the returns made to the present parliament, the
same shameful additions to rich livings of that which
was intended to have gone to poor ones, are made
apparent ; the same shamelessly miserable payment
of the curates, who do the actual work for which the
money is received by the selfish and the idle, has been
continued. It is not within the compass of this
volume to go at great length into these details; — a
sample will suffice. These cases were lately adduced
by Lord King in the house of peers.

" Dean and Canon of Windsor, impropriator of the

Q

226 PRIESTCRAFT

following parishes, received from parliamentary grant
and Queen Anne's Bounty : — Plymsted, 1811, 6001. ;

1812, 400/. ; 1815, 300/. Plympton, , 600/.

St. German's, 1811, 800/. ; 1814, 400/. Wembury,

1807, 200/. ; 1816, 1400/. Northam, 1764, 200/. ;
1812, 400/. South Moulton, 1813, 600/.

" Dean and Canon of Winchester, impropriators of
tithes of two large parishes in Wales: — Holt, 1725,
200/.; 1733, 200/. Iscoyd, 1749, 200/.; 1757,
200/. ; 1798, 200/. ; 1818, 200/.

"Dean of Exeter, impropriator of tithe ; — Landkey,
1775,200/.; 1810, 200/.; 1815,1400/. Swimbed,
1750,200/.; 1811,400/.

" Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, impropriators of
valuable tithe :— Hesket, 1813,600/.; 1815, 2000/.
to purchase land ; 1816, 300/. ; 1817, 300/.

" Dean of Bangor, impropriator of tithe (curate
paid 32/. 45.) :— Gyffin, 1767, 200/. ; 1810, 200/. ;
1816, 1400/.

" Bishop of Bangor, impropriator of valuable tithe
(curate paid 30/. 12*.) : — Llandegar, 1812, 200/. ;
1815, 1600/.; , 300/. ; , 300/.

" Bishop of Lichfield, impropriator of large tithes
in Merionethshire (curate paid only 27/.) : — Tally lyr,

1808, 200/. ; 1816, 1400/. Penal, 1810, 200/."
Thus these returns proved, that for thirteen

parishes these Rev. Gentlemen had drawn 14,500/.
which ought to have been paid from their own
pockets.

The Edinburgh Review, in the same able article
above quoted, says — " Those who complain of the
poverty of the clergy pretend to suppose that no
security for residence is necessary ; and, that as soon
as the small livings are raised high enough, non-
residence will disappear as a matter of course. For
instance, Dr. Cove says, ' all the Church of England's

IN ALL AGES. 227

sons are, with few exceptions, ever intent on their
appropriate duties ; and would be still more diligent
were each of them possessed of a more enlarged and
comfortable independence, and furnished with more
suitable abodes.' This, unfortunately for the Doctor,
is more capable of being brought to the test than the
* unrecorded revelation' to Adam in favour of tithes.
We have returns of small livings, and we have
returns of non-residence. In the diocese of Rochester
there are only six livings under 1501. a year, and of
those six not one is returned under 1101. Of the
107 benefices returned in that diocese, there were, in
1809, but 50 with resident incumbents — less than
half the livings. In the diocese of Chester, where
the livings under 150/. a year are numerous, 377 out
of 592 being of that description, a considerably larger
proportion of the benefices have residents than in
Rochester — there are 327 residents. In other dio-
ceses the number of poor livings bears no regular
proportion to the number of non-residents. The fact
is, that under the discipline of the church of Eng-
land, where there are so many grounds of exemption
or of license for non-residence, the only persons who
may be expected to reside, are those whose narrow
incomes make their residence in their own parsonages
a matter of necessity or convenience.

I shall speedily have occasion to shew that in all
countries where the incomes of the clergy are mo-
derate, there the clergy themselves are at once the
most attentive to their duties, and most respected and
beloved by the people. For the present, the following
statement from the Carlisle Journal will afford a
striking confirmation of the justice of these remarks ;
and so impressive an example of the shameless plu-
ralities of the higher clergy, and the miserable manner

q 2

228 PRIESTCRAFT

of their paying the poor labouring curates, as may
render further selections superfluous.

PLURALITIES, AND CURATES' STIPENDS.

Small as is the see of Carlisle, it affords some
admirable specimens of the working of the church
system, and of these we will now give a sample. And
first of the pluralists, we have —

Hugh Percy, bishop of Carlisle, a prebend of St.
Paul's, and a chancellor of Sarum.

R. Hodgson, dean of Carlisle, vicar of Burgh-on-
Sands, rector of St. George's, Hanover- square, and
vicar of Hillington.

E. Goodenough, prebend of Carlisle, Westminster,
and York ; vicar of Wath All Saints on Dearn,
chaplain of Adwick, and chaplain of Brampton-
Bierlow.

S. J. Goodenough, prebend of Carlisle, rector of
Broughton Poges, vicar of Hampton, and deputy
lord-lieutenant of Cumberland.

Wm. Goodenough, archdeacon of Carlisle, rector
of Marcham-le-Fen, and rector of Great Salkeld.

W. Vansittart, D.D., prebend of Carlisle, master
of Wigston's Hospital, Leicester, vicar of Waltham
Abbas, and vicar of Shottesbrooke.

W. Fletcher, chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle,
prebend of York, vicar of Bromfield, vicar of Dalston,
and vicar of Lazenby.

It is not our intention, at present, to inquire into
the incomes of these dignitaries; but as they are
pretty considerable, it may be worth while just to
contrast the salaries they award to those who really
work, with the moneys they receive from the livings.
The tithes received by the Dean and Chapter for

IN ALL AGES. 229

[esket, amount to 1000/. or 1500/. a-year; they
pay to the curate who does the duty 18/. 5s. a-year!
— that is to say, Is. a-day — being after the rate of
the bricklayer's labourer's wages! In Wetheral and
Warwick, the Dean and Chapter draw about 1000/.
a-year from tithes, and 1000/. a-year from the church
lands ; and they pay the working minister (probably
one of the most exemplary and beloved men in
England in his station) the sum of 50/. a-year — the
wages of a journeyman cabinet-maker ! The tithes
of the parishes of St. Cuthbert and St. Mary, amount
at the least to 1500/. a-year. The two curates (who
do the duty) receive each the sum of 21. 13s. 4d.
a-year ! ! ! And then, to the minor canons, who do
the cathedral duty (such as it is), they pay the sum
of 6s. 8d. a-year each ! The Dean and Chapter hold
several other impropriate rectories, pay the curates
a mere nominal sum for performing the duties, and
pocket the tithes themselves — for doing nothing!"

Carlisle Journal.

The Rev. W. Pullen, rector of Little Gidding,
Huntingdonshire, asserts in a pamphlet of his, that a
late bishop held twelve places of preferment at the
same time, and the greater number, parochial benefices!

With such things as these before our eyes, — and
which way can we turn and not see them ? — who can
believe that the British public can much longer suffer
the church to remain unregenerated ? Look where
we will, we behold the most gross instances of
simony, pluralities, non-residence, and penurious
remuneration of the working clergy. But of these
matters in the next chapter: — two other ramifications
of the establishment which require reform — Eccle-
siastical Courts and the Universities, I must passingly
notice, and then close this.

These two organs and auxiliaries must necessarily

230 PRIESTCRAFT

come within the sweep of any reform which visits
effectually the church; — they are vital parts of that
great priestly system which has so long rested in ease
and comfort on the shoulders of this much-enduring
country. As their reform is a necessary consequence
of that of the church, I shall say less of them ; but
they involve enormities of such a nature, as nothing
but the apathy induced by long custom could have
brought Englishmen to tolerate.

The universities, founded and endowed by kings
and patriotic men, for the general benefit and encou-
ragement of learning in the nation, are monopo-
lized by the priests of the establishment. All offices
in them are in their hands ; no layman, much less
a dissenter, can hold a post in them. The Thirty-
nine Articles are set up like so many Giants Despair,
to drive away with their clubs of intolerance all who
will not kiss their feet. These chartered priests
grasp the emoluments and the immunities of these
ancient seats of learning, and triumphantly tell us of
the great men which the establishment has produced.
This is a little too much for the patience of any but
an Englishman. Had the gates of these great schools
been thrown open to the whole nation for whose
benefit they were established, and to the popular
spirit of improvement which has been busy in the
world, they might have told us of thousands more as
great, as good, and far wiser, inasmuch as they would
have been educated in an atmosphere of a more
liberal and genial character. As it is, they have
lagged, like the establishment to which they are
linked, behind the spirit of the age, to a degree which
has disgusted the most illustrious even of their own
sons. It never was my lot to make a practical
acquaintance with the advantages or abuses of either
of them ; but, if the best authorities are to be trusted,

IN ALL AGES. 231

the devil never found himself more in his element,
since he descended from his position in the Tree
of Knowledge, in the Garden of Eden, to mount
those of Oxford and Cambridge.

To the two great popular journals of Edinburgh
and Westminster, the country is indebted for several
most able expositions of the abuses of both spiritual
courts and universities ; and the latter in No. XXIX.
speaks thus — " The rents and fines arising from broad
lands, amongst the most fair and fertile in the realm ;
from lordly manors and goodly farms ; the profits of
the advowsons of numerous and valuable benefices ;
tithes, and tolls, and every advantage that earth can
yield; palaces, for such indeed are most of our
colleges, for the habitation of the learned ; noble
churches, halls, libraries, and galleries, for their use and
delight, with gardens, groves, and pleasure-grounds ;
plate, and pictures, and marbles ; a countless store of
hidden books and MSS., as well as a more vulgar
wealth, accumulated in vast sums of money, yielding-
interest in the funds, or upon mortgage. How
strange would the large opulence appear, were the
inventory correctly taken, to the inhabitants of foreign
universities, which nevertheless are accounted wealthy ;
and not less strange to its rightful owners, the people
of England, to a brave, generous and loyal people, who
have been ready in all Ages to contribute largely from
their store to works of learning and piety, but who
have been ill-requited by their rulers.

" Astonishing is the wealth of our universities,
greatly exceeding the sum of all the possessions of
all the other learned bodies in the world ; yet would
it be an unfair and injurious statement to affirm, that
not a single shilling of their enormous income is truly
applied to the purposes for which it was designed?
The accusation is still more grave ; not only do these

'232 PRIESTCRAFT

corporations neglect to furnish any direct encourage-
ment to the studious, but they offer much positive
discouragement. The sedulous youth who entered
the walls of his college thirsting for honourable dis-
tinction, can best tell how his ardent curiosity was
chilled by the oscitancy, the inertness, the narrow
illiberality of those to whom he looked for assistance,
excitement, and support. The favour that Locke
found at Oxford is matter of history : Gibbon has re-
corded his contemptuous scorn for ' the monks of
Magdalene.' It would be easy to name other chil-
dren of genius, who have proved that the self-styled
alma mater was a most unjust and cruel step-mother.
" Amongst the evils of ecclesiastical sway, there is a
mischief which annuls our universities, and destroys
their very existence for every purpose of utility : it
arises out of their spiritual constitution, and converts
establishments that ought to be schools of learning,
into race-courses and amphitheatres, wherein compe-
titors and gladiators, as worthless as our jockeys, or
the Thracians of old, struggle, or collude, to get pos-
session of livings. This is the grand, the sole object
of academical existence; the pursuit of learning is
the flimsy pretext — the real aim is to obtain prefer-
ment in the church. The cause of the evil must
be instantly removed ; we will speak briefly of its
operation. An university ought to be, and at all
other places except Oxford and Cambridge really
is, one establishment, every part co-operating for
the augmentation and communication of knowledge.
Simony, in its most pernicious form, has destroyed
at once the unity and utility of institutions which we
would gladly venerate. Ancient schools, designed
for the use of the whole body, still exist at Oxford,
to attest the degradation of modern times ; each of
these is inscribed with the title of one of the liberal

IN ALL AGES. 233

sciences, or of one of the faculties, but it is never
applied to the use for which it was designed. Nume-
rous professors are decorated with honourable titles,
and receive salaries for giving various lectures, which
are never delivered ; or if, as sometimes happens,
an obstinate statute, which cannot be neglected or
evaded, compels him to discourse in public, the dis-
honest priest gives what are significantly called ' wall-
lectures,' since he addresses himself to the walls
alone ; and it is generally understood that no one
ought to stand between them and their teacher.
Unless these abuses be speedily remedied, it is mani-
fest that the march of mind, of which some now
boast, is a retreat, a shameful flight; and if the
schoolmaster be indeed abroad, as some afhrm, it is
because he is not at home : having robbed his scholars,
the scoundrel has absconded.

" The university of Oxford has long ceased to
exist, except for the purpose of electioneering ; for
some time it was doubtful whether it was creditable
to represent its M. M. A. A. in parliament, but the
dispute has been finally determined, and we may
reasonably question, whether an unworthy abuse of
almost unbounded patronage be not too high a price
to pay for the credit, whatever it be, that arises from
sitting for the sister university. Except for the pur-
pose of vain pageants, designed to aucupate benefices,
by cajoling the patrons, the university of Oxford has
long ceased to exist ; for the purposes of learning it
has been annihilated, dissolved, and destroyed, by
having been divided into many minute, insignificant,
and worthless portions. There are about thirty col-
leges ; — the system of education, if it deserve that
name, is separate and distinct at each, and miserable
in all : the greater part of the funds, and the best
apartments of every college, are set apart for a priest

234 PRIESTCRAFT

who, under the name of master, provost, warden,
principal, or the like, enjoys at the expense of the
public, every luxury that the most sensual could
desire ; yet this person contributes as little to the
instruction of the youth of his society, as the Chief
of the Black Eunuchs in the Grand Sultan's seraglio,
or the Jew who takes toll at one of the turnpikes
near London. A stranger would suppose that, being
thus pampered in idleness, and growing fat upon the
appropriation of charitable funds, the reverend sine-
curist, through a certain decorous shame, would be
at least civil and unpresuming ; we appeal to those
who are experienced in the deportment of contume-
lious insolence, whether it be so.

" The residue of the funds of the college is wasted
upon a long list of fellows, the greater part of whom
are absentees, and are alike unwilling and incapable
of earning their salaries. The lowest and least of
these is usually the tutor; — with or without the assist-
ance of a drudge, still more unworthy than himself,
this poor hack endeavours, by a few wretched lec-
tures, to conceal the total want of all sound and
wholesome instruction, and the monstrous misappli-
cation of the wealth of the nation. He is often a
man of low birth, whom laziness or physical infirmity
rendered unfit for the flail or the loom ; and, having
availed himself of some eleemosynary foundation,
he has won his way to an office which ought to be
accounted honourable, but, by the accumulation of
the grossest abuses has been rendered servile. If the
aspiring clown had elevated himself by a generous
excellence, by a preeminence in liberal learning, his
low birth far from being a stain, would shed a lustre
upon his new station ; but under the present unhappy
constitution of our universities, these mushrooms are
culled for deleterious, not for wholesome properties.

IN ALL AGES. 235

If his birth was low, his mind is commonly lower ;
he is not selected on account of his learning, but of
his subserviency. When a teacher of gentle blood is
taken, it may happen perchance, that although he was
born a freeman, he has the soul of a slave. The
fellowships in like manner, are for the most part con-
ferred upon kinsmen, upon tools, upon all but those
who are best entitled to hold them. It may be that,
with much pomp and ceremony, and an ostentatious
display of the favour shewn to letters, some little
proficient in the course of elementary instruction,
prescribed to keep up the shew of attention to edu-
cation, is now and then put into possession of one of
those valuable annuities ; but the yawning sluggard,
the dull sot, is generally deemed more eligible than
the zealous scholar.

" Let us suppose, however, that all fellowships
were fairly bestowed upon the young men who were
most worthy to hold them, still would our universi-
ties fall far short of that utility which we have an
unalienable right to insist upon reaping from our
public domains. In the case we have supposed, all
improvement would cease at the end of the first year
of academical residence ; after taking the first degree
there would be no motive to advance further on the
road to learning. Each college would be, as it now
is, a clerical tontine ; an abominable institution, alike
hostile to learning and subversive of piety. Surely
our sagacious, clear-headed fellow-countrymen are
not aware that every one of the numerous colleges
which they maintain at such an enormous cost, is
merely a clerical tontine ! The instant a young man
is elected a fellow, he has but one object ; to outlive
his brethren, — and thus to receive, in succession, the
valuable benefices attached to his college, which were
designed to reward the most learned, but which are

236 PRIESTCRAFT

blindly and dishonestly handed over to the longest
liver.

Now what is thus written in the present day, is
exactly of the same stamp as what was uttered by
Gibbon: — " The schools of Oxford and Cambridge
were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous
science ; and they are still tainted with the vices of
their origin. Their primitive discipline was adapted
to the education of priests and monks ; and their
government is still in the hands of the clergy, an order
of men whose manners are remote from the present
world, and whose eyes are dazzled by the light of
philosophy." Nay, it is exactly the same as what
Milton wrote in his time. We hear those who have
studied there continually declaring that the system of
education pursued is infinitely behind that given by
dissenters to their ministers, so far as it regards their
real preparation for the office of Christian teachers. I
have frequently heard young men declare that they
had no need to study there. With a certain quantity
of mathematics, or of Greek and Latin, they could
take a degree, and that was enough. So it must have
been in Milton's days. " They pretend that their
education either at school or university hath been
very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in
future by a plentiful maintainance ; whereas it is well
known that the better half of them are oft-times poor
and pitiful boys, that having no merit, or promising
hopes, that might entitle them to the public provision,
but their poverty, and the unjust favour of friends ;
have had their breeding both at school and university
at the public cost ; which might engage them the
rather to give freely, as they have freely received.

" Next it is a fond error, though too much believed
among us, to think that the university makes a
minister of the gospel. That it may conduce to other

IN ALL AGES. 237

arts and sciences, I dispute not now, but that which
makes fit a minister the Scriptures can best tell us to
be only from above. How shall they preach, unless
they be sent ? By whom sent ? By the university,
or the magistrate, or their belly ? No surely ; but
sent from God only, and that God who is not their
belly. And whether he be sent from God, or from
Simon Magus, the inward sense of his calling and
spiritual ability will sufficiently tell him.

" But yet, they say, it is also requisite he should
be trained up in other learning, which can be had no
where better than at the universities. I answer, that
what learning, either human or divine, can be neces-
sary to a minister, may as easily and less chargeably
be had in any private house. How deficient else,
and to how little purpose are all those piles of sermons,
notes, and comments on all parts of the Bible, —
bodies and marrows of divinity, beside all other
sciences in our English tongue ; many of the same
books which in Latin they read at the university?
And the small necessity of going there to learn Di-
vinity I prove first from the most part of themselves,
who seldom continue there till they have well got
through logick, their first rudiments. And those
theological disputations there held by professors and
graduates, are such as tend least of all to the edifi-
cation or capacity of the people, but rather perplex
and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash, than
enable any minister to the better preaching of the
gospel.' " Milton on Hirelings.

When past and present authorities thus agree to
describe the great universities of the nation, wo be
to that nation if it do not break the slumbers of
these clerical drones, throw wide the gates to the
influx of real knowledge, and of all those who thirst
for knowledge, that we may never more hear of such.

238 PRIESTCRAFT

men as Locke being expelled for their love of free-
dom, or Wesley for their piety.

Of the continuance of ecclesiastical courts to this
enlightened period, what shall we say, — but that
Englishmen are a most patient race ? A dark and
mysterious assemblage as of bats and owls ! A sort
of Inquisition shorn of its power by public opinion,
and suffered by public opinion to exist. Priests,
allowed no longer to summon men to their hidden
tribunals, and rack their persons, but permitted still
to seize on their wills with rude hands, and rack their
purses without mercy ! Clerical peers and clerical
legislators are anomalous enough ; but clerical taxers
of orphans, and clerical guardians of testamentary
documents, are still more anomalous. Here is a
popish institution existing in a protestant country,
which even popish countries have abandoned, and
conveyed its functions into the hands of laymen ! Our
wise Saxon ancestors suffered nothing of this kind
amongst them : it is true they permitted bishops to
take their seats in the civil courts to protect their
own rights, but it remained for the Norman invader
to concede to Rome this dangerous privilege of cleri-
cal courts. Time and knowledge have thrown into
desuetude most of those powers by which they for-
merly harassed our forefathers. They no longer
trouble themselves about the reformation of manners,
the punishing of heresy ; nor do churchwardens care
to present scandalous livers to the bishop : but refuse
to pay a fee, and they will speedily " curse thee to
thy face." They are in fact a sort of obscure and
dusty incorporations for collecting and enjoying good
revenues, under the names of bishop, surrogates,
proctors, registrers, deputy-registrers, and so forth,
from fees on wills, consecrations, and various other
sources and immunities. For the greediness of these

IN ALL AGES. 239

lerical owls in past days, let any one consult
"haucer. The worthy Lyon-king-at-arms of Scotland,
>ir David Lindsay of the Mount, also made merry
nth. them in his days :

Marry, I lent my gossip my mare to fetch home coals,

And he her drowned in the quarry holes.

And 1 ran to the consistorie, for to pleinze,

And there I fell among a greedy meinze.

They gave me first a thing they call cilandum;

Within eight days I got but libellandum ;

Within a month I got ad apponendum ;

In half a year I got inter loquendum ;

And then I got — how call ye it 1 — ad replicandum ;

But I could never a word yet understand 'em.

And then they made me pull out many placks,

And made me pay for four and twenty acts ;

But ere they came half way to concludendum,

The devil a plack was left for to defend him.

Thus they postponed me two years with their train ;

Then, hodie ad octo, bade me come again.

And then, their rooks, they croaked wonderous fast ;

For sentence silver they cried at the last.

Of pronunciandum , they made me wonder fain,

But I never got my good grey mare again !

This is spoken in the character of a poor man ;
another character then adds,

My Lords, we must reform these consistory laws,
Whose great defame, above the heaven blows.
I knew a man, in sueing for a cow,
Ere he had done, he spent full half a bow.*
So that the king's honour we may advance,
We will conclude as they have done in France ;
Let spiritual matters pass to spiritualitie,
And temporal matters unto temporalitie.

Satyre of Three Estaites.

Whoever would see what troublesome and extor-
tionate nuisances these courts are, has only to consult
the voluminous returns made to parliament in 1829
on this subject. Amongst the lesser evils of the

* Half a fold of cows.

240 PRIESTCRAFT

system are the consecration of burial grounds, and
what are called surplice fees. Nothing is more
illustrative of the spirit of priestcraft than that the
church should have kept up the 'superstitious belief
in the consecration of ground in the minds of the
people to the present hour, and that, in spite of edu-
cation, the poor and the rich should be ridden with
the most preposterous notion that they cannot lie in
peace except in ground over which the bishop has
said his mummery, and for which he and his rooks,
as Sir David Lindsay calls them, have pocketed the
fees, and laughed in their sleeves at the gullible fool-
ishness of the people. When will the day come when
the webs of the clerical spider shall be torn not only
from the limbs but the souls of men ? Does the honest
Quaker sleep less sound, or will he arise less cheer-
fully at the judgment-day from his grave, over which
no prelatical jugglery has been practised, and for
which neither prelate nor priest has pocketed a doit ?
Who has consecrated the sea, into which the British
sailor in the cloud of battle-smoke descends, or who
goes down, amidst the tears of his comrades, to
depths to which no plummet but that of God's omni-
presence ever reached? Who has consecrated the
battle-field, which opens its pits for its thousands and
tens of thousands ; or the desart, where the weary
traveller lies down to his eternal rest? Who has
made holy the sleeping place of the solitary mission-
ary, and of the settlers in new lands ? Who but He
whose hand has hallowed earth from end to end, and
from surface to centre, for his pure and almighty
fingers have moulded it ! Who but He whose eye
rests on it day and night, watching its myriads of
moving children — the oppressors and the oppressed —
the deceivers and the deceived — the hypocrites, and
the poor whose souls are darkened with false know-

IN ALL AGES.

ledge and fettered with the bonds of daring selfish-
ness ? and on whatever innocent thing that eye rests,
it is hallowed beyond the breath of bishops, and the
fees of registrers. Who shall need to look for a con-
secrated spot of earth to lay his bones in, when the
struggles and the sorrows, the prayers and the tears
of our fellow men, from age to age, have consecrated
every atom of this world's surface to the desire of a
repose which no human hands can lead to, no human
rites can secure ? Who shall seek for a more hal-
lowed bed than the bosom of that earth into which
Christ himself descended, and in which the bodies of
thousands of glorious patriots, and prophets, and
martyrs, who were laid in gardens and beneath their
paternal trees, and of heroes whose blood and sighs
have flowed forth for their fellow men, have been left
to peace and the blessings of grateful generations with
no rites, no sounds but the silent falling of tears and
the aspirations of speechless, but immortal thanks ?
From side to side, from end to end, the whole world
is sanctified by these agencies, beyond the blessings
or the curses of priests ! God's sunshine flows over
it, his providence surrounds it; it is rocked in his
arms like the child of his eternal love ; his faithful
creatures live, and toil, and pray in it ; and, in the
name of heaven, who shall make it, or who can need
it holier for his last resting couch ! But the greedi-
ness of priests persists in cursing the poor with ex-
tortionate expenses, and calls them blessings. The
poor man, who all his days goes groaning under the
load of his ill-paid labours, cannot even escape from
them into the grave except at a dismal charge to his
family. His native earth is not allowed to receive
him into her bosom till he has satisfied the priest and
his satellites. With the exception of Jews, Quakers
and some few other dissenters, every man is given

R

242 PRIESTCRAFT

up in England as a prey, in life and in death, to the
parson, and his echo, and his disturber of bones.

The following, from the Leeds Mercury, is a fair
example of the expense incurred for what is called
consecration of the smallest addition to a burial-
ground — and wretched must be the mental stupidity
of a people who can believe that such fellows can add
holiness to the parish earth.

To the churchwardens of Tadcaster was sent the
following letter : —

(copy.)

Gentlemen, — I send you enclosed the charges on the conse-
cration of the additional churchyard at Tadcaster.

I am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant,

JOSEPH BUCKLE.

York, 26th March, 1829.

Fees on consecration of the additional Burial-ground
at Tadcaster.

1828. £.

Drawing and engrossing the petition to the Arch-
bishop to consecrate - - - - - -150

Drawing and engrossing the sentence of consecration 2 2 0
Drawing the Act - - - - - -0 13 6

Registering the above instruments and the deed at

length, and parchment - - - - -220

The Chancellor's fee - - - - - - 5 0 0

The principal Register's fee- - - - -500

The Secretary's fee - - - - - -500

The Deputy Register's attendance and expenses - 3 15 6
The Apparitor's fee- - - - - -110

Fee on obtaining the seal - - - - -110

Carriage - - - - - - - -050

.£27 5 0

For burying a poor man this is the common scale
of charge in this town : — For the burial of even a
pauper 7s. 6d. — for a child six months old, the same
— if the child be not baptized, Is. ; for in that state
it is, by clerical logic, deemed not a human being,
but a thing, until their mummery has ennobled it —

IN ALL AGES. 243

a thing beneath God's notice — it is therefore thrust
into any hole by the sexton. In the principal
churchyard, a man who wishes to choose the place of
burial must pay 10/. for the size of a grave ; and
for opening such a grave, about 21. 15s. 6d. For
opening a vault, even in village churchyards, 51. is
commonly demanded ; in the church 10/. ; and what
is worst, after all, it has been proved by more than
one legal decision, no man's family vault is sacred
and inviolable. The church and churchyard are the
parson's freehold. In them, during his life, he can
work his own will, but he cannot sell a right of vault
beyond his own life. There are numbers of families
who nattered themselves they had a place of family
sepulture into which no stranger could intrude ; but
let them excite the wrath of some clerical parish
tyrant, and he can shew them that not only can he
refuse to permit the opening of their vault to receive
their dead till his demands, however exorbitant, are
satisfied, but that he can refuse to have it opened at
all ; and moreover, can thrust in, at his pleasure, the
carcasses of the vilest wretches in the parish. Thus,
by dealing with priests, the people are served as they
always have been — juggled out of their money for
" that which is nought ;" and thrown into the abso-
lute power of a most mercenary order of men. They
are suffered to buy that which cannot be really sold ;
and when they look for a freehold, they find only a
trap for clerical fees. From root to branch the whole
system is rotten ; — give ! give ! give ! is written on
every wall and gate of the church : and though a man
quit it and its communion altogether, he must still
pay, in life and in death, to it. Nay, by a recent
case in the diocese of Salisbury, it is shewn by the
bishop that a man once having taken orders can
never lay them down again. A Mr. Tiptaft having

244

PRIESTCRAFT

resigned his living from conscientious motives, began
to preach as a dissenter ; but the bishop attempted
to stop his mouth with menacing the thunders of the
church; and, on his astonished declaration that he
was no longer a son of the church, the prelate let him
know that he was, and must be — for clerical orders,
like Coleridge's infernal fire — must

Cling to him everlastingly.
To this church, which empties the pockets of the
poor, and stops the mouth of the conscientious dis-
senter, let every Englishman do his duty.

IN ALL AGES. 245

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

The Church of England is unpopular. It is connected with
the crown and the aristocracy, but is not regarded with affection
by the mass of the people ; and this circumstance greatly lessens
its utility, and has powerfully contributed to multiply the num-
ber of dissenters. Edinburgh Review, No. lxxxviii. ,,

We are overdone with standing armies. We have an army of
lawyers with tough parchments and interminable words (o con-
found honesty and common sense ; an army of paper to fight
gold ; an army of soldiers to fight the French ; an army of
doctors to fight death ; and an army of parsons to fight the
devil — of whom he standeth not in awe !

The late William Fox of Nottingham.

But while the nation demands those alterations just
enumerated, the internal prosperity, nay the very
existence of the episcopal church, as a vital and fruit-
ful Christian community, demands others. And first
of all, that it should be delivered from the curse of
patronage, — the source of a thousand evils, — the
cause of lamentable moral lethargy and paralysis.
While every Christian society around it enjoys the
just privilege of choosing its own ministers, will it be
long endured by this church that it should be kept in
a condition of everlasting tutelage ; that its members,
however wise, enlightened, and capable of managing
all their affairs for themselves ; who would hold it as
the highest insult that the state should appoint over-
seers to choose for their children schoolmasters, and

246 PRIESTCRAFT

for themselves stewards, attorneys, or physicians —
will it be endured long that some state favourite who
never saw them, or their place ; or some neighbouring
fox-hunting squire, whose intellect, if it exhibit itself
any where, is in his boot-heels, — that some horse-
jockey, or gambler, some fellow whose life is a con-
tinual crime, his conversation a continual pestilence ;
who, if he were a poor man, would have been long
since hanged, but being a rich one, he is at once the
choicest son and purveyor of Satan, and the hereditary
selector of the minister of God, — will it be endured
that such a man shall put in over the heads of a
respectable, pious, and well-informed community, a
spiritual guide and teacher ? — put him in, in spite of
their abhorrence and remonstrances ? and that once in,
neither patron nor people shall get him out, though
he be dull as the clod of his own glebe, and vicious
as the veriest scum of his parish, who prefers the pot-
house to his polluted house of prayer ? From this
source has flowed the most fatal results to the church ;
nay, it may be safely asserted, nine-tenths of the
evils which afflict it. By this means it has been filled
with every species of unworthy character ; — men who
look upon it as a prey ; who come to it with coldness
and contempt ; who gather its fruits, while other and
better men toil for them ; and squander them in
modes scandalous not merely to a church but to human
society. By this means it has been made the heritage
of the rich man's children, while the poor and unpa-
tronized man of worth and talent has plodded on in its
labours, and despaired. By this means so worldly a
character has grown upon its ministers, that they have
become blind to the vilest enormities of the system,
and now look on simony as a matter of course.
Whoever doubts this — and yet who does doubt it ? —
let him look into the British, or Clerical Magazine,

IN ALL AGES. 247

and he will find the reverend correspondents asking
with the utmost simplicity — how can the bishops help
men selling advowsons ? It never seems once to
occur to them, that if there were no clerical buyers
there would be no sellers. In the same journal for
June, 1832, p. 357, is also the following statement ; —
" Of the whole number of benefices in England, very
nearly 8000, that is, more than two-thirds of the
whole, are in private patronage. Of the clergy, a
very considerable number have purchased the livings
which they hold ; and of the remainder, most have
been brought up to the church, and educated with a
view to some particular piece of preferment in the
gift of their family and relations. Whether this be right
or wrong, it is an effect almost necessarily following
from so large a portion of the property of the church
being private property ; a state of things not to be
altered, and which they who wish to abolish pluralities
do not talk of altering."

Now here in one sentence, written by a clergyman,
and published in a clerical magazine, we have the
root and ground of three-fourths of the evils and
enormities of the establishment. We have a state-
ment, that out of 10,000 livings in England, nearly
8,000 are in the hands of private people ; that is, in
the hands each of a man who, whatever be his life or
his qualifications for judging, can and does put in a
clergyman over the heads of his neighbours, to serve
his own views, which are commonly to establish some
rake or blockhead of a son or nephew, or to make
what money he can out of a stranger, if he has no
children ; that is, not to seek the most pious man,
but the highest bidder. And consequently the next
assertion is, that a very considerable number have
purchased these livings ; — thus, not the pious man,
but the highest bidder, the boldest dealer in simony

248 PRIESTCRAFT

has had the livings. Oh ! poor people who are doomed
to sit under such pastors, and vainly hope to grow
in heavenly knowledge ! The remainder, says this
most logical writer, have been brought up with a
view to some particular piece of preferment from
their friends and relations. Yes, younger sons — no
matter what their heads or their hearts are made of —
doomed to deal out God's threats and promises to the
people. Desperate handlers of God's sacred things —
who rush fearlessly into his temple, not because he
has called them, but because their relations have the
key of the doors. And all this, this clerical writer
puts forth with the most innocent face imaginable.
While he enumerates causes enough to have made
St. Paul's hair stand on end ; when he tells us that
simony is common as daylight ; that the bulk of the
livings in England are not open to the pious and the
worthy, but are the heritage of certain men who may
be neither — he is so far from seeing any thing amiss,
that he goes on to point out the advantage of such a
state of things. He declares it cannot be altered;
and this is one of his reasons why the church should
not be reformed. He does not at all perceive that
no church with so scandalous and preposterous a
foundation, can possibly stand many years in the
midst of a country where the spirit of man is busily
at work to pry into the nature of all things, and
where any monopoly, but especially of religious pa-
tronage, must assuredly arouse an indignation that
will overturn it. Miserably dark must be the moral
atmosphere of a church where its members come for-
ward with a mental obtuseness like this, to advocate
its abominations as if they were virtues, while the
very people gape round them with astonishment, and
they perceive it not. But there are no labourers in
the demolition of a bad institution like its own friends.

IN ALL AGES. 249

They are like insects in a rotten tree ; roused by ex-
ternal alarm to activity, they bustle about and scatter
the trunk, which holds them, into dust. Such men
put a patch of new arguments into the old garment
of corruption, and the rent is made worse.

To proceed. — By these means the church has
been filled with pride and apathy; and it is noto-
rious, that of all Christian ministers, the ministers of
the establishment are the least interested in their
flocks, — cultivate and enjoy the least sympathy with
them. I accidentally, the other day, took up Sir
Arthur Brooke Faulkner's Tour in Germany, and
immediately fell on this passage, which coming from
a man fresh from the observation of the continental
churches, is worthy of attention. " Nowhere else
in Europe are clergymen, and no wonder, less re-
spected among the multitude than in the British
dominions." He proceeds to account for this by
their apathy, their pluralities, their exorbitant reve-
nues, maintenance by tithes, and acting as legislators.
He adds — " If the statement which has already been
alluded to may be credited, the clergy of the United
Kingdoms are paid more than the clergy of all the
rest of Christendom besides by a million sterling and
upwards, the full amount of their annual revenue
being 8,852,000/. In primitive times, and in the
different countries at the present time which I have
visited, the remuneration of their labour is, as we
have seen, in many cases, chiefly voluntary. In
these countries it needs no prelacy strutting in lawn
sleeves, and ' raising their mitred fronts in courts
and parliaments,' to clothe it with respect."

This, in contradiction of the many assertions of
the advocates of our English establishment, who con-
tend that without dignities and large revenues the

250 TRIESTCRAFT

clergy would sink into contempt, is borne out by the
experience of all the world. The dignities and large
revenues of the papal church did not embalm its
clergy in public estimation; and to whatever country
we turn, we find that wherever the clergy are but
moderately endowed, there they are diligent, and there
they are esteemed. What is the opinion of Milton,
of the preferments which have been so much vaunted
as stimulants to activity and talent in the church ?
That they are but " lures or loubells, by which the
worldly-minded priest may be tolled, from parish to
parish, all the country over." The Scotch clergy are
but slenderly incomed, and what is the testimony of
their countrymen, the Edinburgh Reviewers, con-
cerning them ? " In Scotland there are 950 parish
clergymen, whose incomes may average 275/. a-year
each ; and the Scottish clergy are not inferior in
point of attainments to any in Europe : no complaints
have ever been made of the manner in which they
perform their duty ; but, on the contrary, their ex-
emplary conduct is the theme of well-merited and
constant eulogy."

Let us now turn again to Sir A. B. Faulkner's
account of the German clergy. — " The Hessean clergy
are exemplary in the discharge of their multifarious
duties. A clergyman, no matter what his grade,
deems it in no respect derogatory from his dignity to
prove his faith by his works. The spiritual and
temporal comfort of their flocks, and their nurture
in all sound impressions of religion, is their unceasing
care; while they hold out, in their own respectable
and uncompromising conduct, both in public and
private, the fairest patterns to enforce the precepts
which they teach. However this may appear to our
church of Englanders, it is fact. The average of a

IN ALL AGES. 251

[essean clergyman's stipend, is about forty dollars
t-year — the dollar three shillings Stirling — to which
lere is added a house and garden, or little farm."

" The clergy at Marberg," he says, " are, in the

trictest sense, a working clergy. They are per-

>etually among their flocks, correcting and training,

id guiding; and in such unremitting labours of

>ve, earn a reputation not the less likely to abide by

lem for being the capital on which they must chiefly

;ly for most of their comforts and happiness. And

surely is most fitting there should exist this reci-

>rocity of feeling and good offices between the pastor

id his flock. The protestant and the catholic are

m the best possible footing with each other; and

share equally in the offices of government." Wherever

he mentions the clergy, it always is in similar terms.

It is only necessary for us always to remember that

this is a clergy very moderately paid, and we then see

the exact value of the arguments for high salaries.

Sorry should I be to see our noble ecclesiastical
piles deserted and falling to decay, because the
national funds were withdrawn ; but I should like to
see them filled with ministers of zeal, and overflowing
congregations. Sorry should I be to see, in my
Sunday rambles into the country, the picturesque
village church deserted by its accustomed minister,
and occupied by some ignorant and clamorous fanatic ;
but I should rejoice when I entered, to find there, not
a mere journeyman hireling, but the worthy pastor, —
not a man standing like a statue, and reading in
monotonous tones, a discourse cold as his own looks ;
but one full of overflowing love, and a lively though
rational zeal, that made his hearers warm at once to
him, towards each other, and towards God ; and when
we went forth I should be glad to see, not what I too
often see, a stately person who smiles sunnily, shakes

252 PRIESTCRAFT

hands heartily, talks merrily with the few wealthy of
his fold ; gives to those of a lower grade a frigid nod
of recognition ; to the poor a contemptuous forgetful-
ness of their presence, and stalks away in sullen
stateliness to his well-endowed parsonage. "Whatever
be chargeable on the catholic priests, it cannot be
denied that they excite a strong and lasting attach-
ment in their followers. They are more affable, more
humble in manner, kind and condolent in spirit, and
are found diligently at the bedside of the sick, and at
the councils of the poor man beset with difficulties.
But he who enters on his living as his birth-right,
who looks on himself as a gentleman, and his hearers
as clowns, what can arouse his zeal ? He who has
no fear of censure, or removal, whence spring his
circumspection and activity ? " My father," said the
natural son of a nobleman, " said to me — it is time
you should choose a profession. You must not be a
tradesman, or you cannot sit at my table ; you have
not shrewdness enough for a lawyer; you would
forget, or poison your patients through carelessness
were you a physician; — I must make a parson, or
some devil of a thing of you; — and he made a parson
of me ; — and I hate the church and every thing belong-
ing to it !" From such ministers what can be expected?
and such ministers are supplied to the church in
legions by this odious system of private patronage.
The ambition of maintaining the character of gentle-
men has made clergymen cold, unimpassioned, insipid
and useless. It was the same in the latter days of
popery. Chaucer sketches us a priest.

That hie on horse willith to ride
In glitterande golde of grete arraie,
Painted and portrid all in pride,
No common knight maie go so gaie ;

IN ALL AGES. J* 253

Chaunge of clothing every daie,
With goldin girdils grete and small,
As boistrous as is bere at baie,
All soche falshede mote nedis fall.

Now we don't want a set of fine gentlemen; we
want a race of zealous, well-informed, kind and
diligent parish priests. If we must have gentlemen,
let us have them of the school of the carpenter's
son, whom honest Decker, the tragic poet, declares
was

A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed !

After this pattern, we care not how many gentlemen
we have in the church; — gentlemen who are not
ashamed, like their master Christ, to be the friends of
the poor. Who desire to live for them ; to live
among them ; to learn their wants, to engage their
affections, to be their counsellors and guides. Men
who can understand and sympathise with the strug-
gling children of poverty and toil, in villages and
solitary places, and are therefore understood by them,
and are beloved by them, and will follow them and
make their precepts the rule of their lives and the
precious hope of their deaths. Oh ! what have not
our clergy to answer for to God and to their country,
that they are not such men; what blessings may
they not become by being such ! I know no men
whose sphere of influence is more capacious and more
enviable. It is the easiest thing in the world to
become the very idol of the poor; there needs but
to shew them that you feel for them, and they are all
ardour and attachment. For the man who will con-
descend to be what Christ was, a lover of the poor,
they will fly at a word over land and water in his
service. He has but to utter a wish, and if it be in
their power, it is accomplished. In the language of

254 41 PRIESTCRAFT

Wordsworth, "it is the gratitude of such men that
oftenest leaves us mourning." The parish clergyman
has facilities of aiding the poor, that few other men
have. At his slightest recommendation, the medical
man is ready to afford them his aid; at his suggestion
the larder and the wardrobe of the hall expand with
alacrity their doors, and the ladies are ready to fly and
become the warmest benefactresses of the afflicted. I
am ready to admit that there are many such men already
in England ; but were it not for the cursed operation
of this private patronage, there would be thousands
more such. Numbers who now have no hope but
of doing the drudgery of a curacy, would then be
called by the voice of a free people, to a course of
active usefulness. The land would be filled with
burning and shining lights that are now hidden
beneath the bushels of stipendiary slavery, and the
effect on our labouring population would soon be
auspiciously visible.

But what is the actual picture presented to us now
under the operation of this detestable system ? Look
where we will, we behold the most gross instances of
simony, pluralities, non-residence, and penurious re-
muneration of the working clergy. If every man
were to declare his individual experience, such things
would make part of his knowledge. In towns, where
the clergy are more under the influence of public
opinion, we see too many instances of lukewarmness,
arrogance, and unfitness. I have seen gamblers,
jockeys, and characterless adventurers put into livings
by the vilest influence, to the horror and loathing of
the helpless congregations — and that in populous
cities ; but in obscure, rural villages, the fruits of the
system are ten-fold more atrociously shameful. There
the ignorant, the brutal, the utterly debauched live
without shame, and tyrannize without mercy over the

IN ALL AGES. 255

poor, uncultivated flocks, whom they render ten times
more stupid and sordid. Within my own knowledge,
I can go over almost innumerable parishes, and find
matter of astonishment at the endurance of English-
men. I once was passing along the street of a county
town in the evening, and my attention was arrested
by the most violent ravings and oaths of a man in
a shop. I inquired the occasion. " Oh ! " said one
of the crowd, who stood seemingly enjoying the spec-
tacle, " Oh ! it is only Parson ; he has got

drunk and followed a girl into her father's house, who
meeting him at the top of the stairs in pursuit of his
affrighted daughter, hurled him to the bottom, and
the worthy man of God is now evaporating his wrath
in vows of vengeance." From these spectators I
found it was one of the commonest sights of the town
to see this clergyman thus drunk, and thus employed.
But why, said I, do not the parishioners get him
dismissed ? A smile of astonishment at the simplicity
of my query went through the crowd. " Get him dis-
missed ! "Who shall get him dismissed 1 Why, he
is the squire's brother; he is, in fact, born to the
living. There is not a man in the parish who is not
a tenant or dependant in some way on the family ;
consequently not a man who dare open his mouth."
They have him, such as he is, and must make their best
of him ; and he or his brother will be sure to rear a
similar prophet for the next generation.

I entered a village not five miles off. This I
found a lovely retired place, with a particularly hand-
some church, a noble parsonage, a neglected school,
and an absent clergyman. The living was 1800Z. a
year — the incumbent a desperate gambler. " Why,"
again I said, " don't you get this man dismissed ?"
I saw the same smile arise at my simplicity. " La!
Sir, why he is his lordship's cousin!" It was a

256 PRIESTCRAFT

decisive answer — to the principle of private patronage
this village also owed the irremediable curse of a
gambling parson.

I went on. — In a few miles I entered a fine open
parish, where the church shewed afar off over its
surrounding level meadows of extreme fertility.
Here the living was added to that of the adjoining
parish. One man held them. Together they brought
2400/. a year.. A curate did the duty at two churches
and a chapel of ease, formerly for 80/. a year — now
for 100/. a year. The rector was never seen except
when he came and pocketed his 2300/. and departed.
This man too was hereditary parson.

But in the parish which I know perhaps better
than any other, a large and populous parish in Der-
byshire, no one could recollect having heard of it
possessing a decent clergyman. The last but one
was a vulgar and confirmed sot. The last came a
respectable youth, well married, but soon fell into
dissipated habits, seduced a young woman of fine
person and some property, who, in consequence,
was abandoned by her connexions, married a low
wretch who squandered her money, and finally died
of absolute starvation. The clergyman's wife, here-
tofore a respectable woman, wounded beyond en-
durance by this circumstance, took to drinking : all
domestic harmony was destroyed ; the vicar began to
drink too. A young family of children grew up
amid all these evil and unfortunate influences : the
parents finally separated ; and as the pastor fell into
years, he fell into deeper vice and degradation. I well
remember him. I remember seeing him upheld, in a
state of utter intoxication over a grave, by two men,
while he vainly strove to repeat the burial service, —
saying, " there is one glory of the sun, and another
glory of the sun" — till they led him away, and closed

IN ALL AGES. 257

the grave. I remember well his small, light person,
his thin but ruddy countenance, and his singular ap-
pearance, as he used to trot at a quick pace up to the
church, or down the village street back again, — for at
that time he performed duty at three churches, each
of which was three miles distant from the other. On
one occasion, in winter, wishing to make great haste,
he put on his skates and took the canal in his way ;
but it was not well frozen beneath the bridges, and the
ice let him in. He hurried home, and changed his
clothes, but left his sermon in the wet pocket, and
arrived only to dismiss his long-expecting congrega-
tion. The old man, notwithstanding his vices, had
much good-nature and no pride. He accepted every
invitation to dinner at the weddings of his humblest
parishioners, for his own dinners were, like those of
the miser Elwes, generally cold boiled eggs and pan-
cakes, which he carried in his pockets and ate as he
went along. His hearers were many of them colliers ;
and in their cabins he has sometimes got so drunk
that he has fallen asleep, and they have put him to bed
with a slice of bacon in one hand, and one of bread
in the other. I remember him meeting a labourer in
the fields one Sunday as he returned from church,
and seeing that the man had been nutting instead of
to prayer, he said — " Ah, William ! you should not
go a nutting on a Sunday ! — Have you got a few for
me, William?" When he administered the sacra-
ment to the sick, he advised them not to take much
of the wine, lest it should increase their fever ; but
added charitably, he would drink it for them, and it
would do as well. In short, he was not without
redeeming qualities ; but he is dead ; or rather, was
kicked out of the world by a horse, when he was in
a state of intoxication. Another came in his stead ;
and such another ! 1 see him now in fancy — he is

s

258 PRIESTCRAFT

still the incumbent, or incumbrance of the parish,
and may be seen by any one who lists — a hard-faced,
vulgar-looking fellow, whom at a glance you know to
have a heart like a pebble, a head full of stupid mis-
chief, and a gripe like iron. I think it was Alderman
Waithman who said in parliament, that of all tyrannies,
none are so odious as the tyranny of a parish priest.
And this fellow is a tyrant to perfection. To the
poor he speedily shewed himself a fierce and arbitrary
dictator ; they must abide his pleasure as to the times
of marrying, burying, and baptism ; and he extorted
from them the uttermost farthing. It is a coal dis-
trict ; and the coal had been got in the surrounding
country, but had been left under the houses to pre-
vent injury to them. This he claimed and sold. In
getting the coal, he threw down a part of several
houses, — cracked and undermined others, and would
probably have thrown down the church, for the work-
men were actually beginning to undermine it, when
the churchwardens interfered. He bought farms, and
borrowed money to pay for them ; and when com-
pelled to pay part of the interest, he persuaded the
attorney to give him a memorandum of the receipt
without a stamp, and then laid an information against
him in the Exchequer. He got a commission to prove
wills, and charged the poor ignorant people double,
till some one more experienced informed the proctor,
and got his occupation taken away. He was to be
found at public-houses, and in the lowest company,
till the very family who got him the living, absented
themselves from the church ; yet, with a very common
kind of inconsistency, when the people complained,
and asked if he could not be removed, this very
family declined acting in it, alleging — it would be a
great scandal for a clergyman to be dismissed from
his living ! ! At length some unwise guardians, who

IN ALL AGES. 259

had lent him the money of their orphan wards on his
bare note, and the strength of his clerical character,
have put him in prison ; and the longer he lies, the
greater the blessing to the people. The following is
part of the report of the Insolvent Debtors' Court
when he applied to be discharged : — " The Rev.
gentleman's debts set forth in his schedule amounted
to 89451. 8s. 9d. It appeared that he had exercised
certain lay vocations ; speculated somewhat in land ;
dabbled a little in twist-lace machinery ; worked a
colliery ; and now and then enjoyed a bit of horse-
dealing. The insolvent's income was 246/. per an-
num, and his out-goings 500/. a-year."

Such is the ecclesiastical history of this one parish ;
such would be that of thousands were they related ;
and all this is the natural result of the absurd and
iniquitous system of state and individual patronage.
Till this scandalous mode — this mode so insulting to
the people of a nation like this, of appointing parish
ministers — be abandoned, vain is every hope of in-
ternal strength and life to the church. Let every
parish choose its own pastor, and a new course will
commence. The worthy and the talented will take
heart, — piety will meet its natural reward, and work
its natural works ; the sot and the hireling incubus
will disappear; the vicar will no more come and
pocket his yearly 2000/. and leave his curate to do his
yearly labour for 100/. ; multitudes of needful reforms
will flow into the heart of the church ; a religious
regimen and new life will animate its constitution.

The canons of the church must be revised ; its articles
abolished, or reduced to rationality ; surplice fees
done away with. It is a crying scandal and oppres-
sion, that none of the children of Heth are left who
will say " bury thy dead out of thy sight — what is it
between me and thee ? — bury thy dead;" but the

s 2

260 PRIESTCRAFT

poor man cannot bury his dead except by feeing the
parson to an amount that will cost him days of hard
labour and months of privation. " To ask a fee of
such," says Milton, " is a piece of paltry craft befitting
none but beggarly artists. Burials and marriages are
so little a part of the priest's gain, that they who con-
sider well may find them to be no part of his func-
tion. It is a peculiar simony of our English divines
only. Their great , champion, Sir Henry Spelman,
in a book written to that purpose, shews by many
cited canons, and some of times corruptest in the
church, that fees extorted or demanded for sacra-
ments, marriages, and especially for burials, are
wicked, accursed, simoniacal, and abominable."

IN ALL AGES. 261

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH CONFIRMATION.

I look on both sides of this human life-
Its brightness and its shadow.

One of the most beautiful and impressive rites of the
church, is the confirmation of young people as it is
seen in the country. On some bright summer morn-
ing, you see troops of village boys and girls come
marching into the town, headed by the village clerk,
or schoolmaster. First one, then another little regi-
ment of these rural embryo Christians, is seen ad-
vancing from different parts towards the principal
church. All are in their best array. Their leader,
with an air of unusual solemn dignity, marches
straight forward, looking neither to the right hand
nor to the left, but sometimes casting a grave glance
behind at his followers. His suit of best black adorns
his sturdy person, and his lappels fly wide in the
breeze that meets him. His charge come on in garbs
of many colours ; — the damsels in green and scarlet
petticoats ; stockings white, black, and grey ; gowns
of white, bearing testimony to miry roads and pro-
voking brambles ; gowns of cotton print of many a
dazzling flowery pattern ; gowns even of silk in these
luxurious days ; long, flying, pink sashes, and pink,
and yellow, and scarlet bunches in bonnets of many a

262 PRIESTCRAFT

I

curious make. The lads stride on with slouching
paces that have not been learned in drawing and
assembly-rooms, but on the barn-floor, beside the
loaded wagon, on the heathy sheep-walk, and in the
deep fallow field. They are gloriously robed in
corduroy breeches, blue worsted stockings, heavy-
nailed ancle-boots, green shag waistcoats, neck-hand-
kerchiefs of red, with long corners that flutter in the
wind, and coats shaped by some sempiternal tailor,
whose fashions know no change. Amid the bustling,
spruce inhabitants of the town, their walk, their dress,
their faces full of ruddy health and sheepish simpli-
city, mark them out as creatures almost of another
tribe. They bring all the spirit of the village — of
the solitary farm — of heaths and woods, and rarely
frequented fields, along with them. You are carried
forcibly by your imagination, at the sight of them,
into cottage life, — into the habits and concerns of the
rural population. You feel what daily anticipations
— what talk — what an early rising, and bustling pre-
paration there has been in many a lowly dwelling, in
many an out-of-the-way hamlet, for this great occa-
sion. How the old people have told over how it was
when they went to be confirmed. What a mighty
place the church is ; what crowds of grand people ;
what an awful thing the bishop in his wig and robes !
How the fond, simple mothers have set forth their
sons and daughters ; and given them injunction on
injunction ; and followed them from their doors with
eyes filled with tears of pride, of joy, and of anxiety.
How the youthful band, half gay, more than half
grotesque, but totally happy, have advanced over hill
and dale. The whole joyousness of their holiday
feeling is presented to you, as they progressed through
bosky lanes and dells, through woods, over the open
breezy heaths and hills, — the flowers, and the dews,

IN ALL AGES. 263

and the green leaves breathing upon them their
freshest influence ; the blue, cheering sky above them,
and the lark sending down, from his highest flight,
his music of ineffable gladness. You feel the secret
awe that struck into their bosoms as they entered the
noisy, glittering, polished, and in their eyes, mighty
and proud town ; and the notion of the church, the
assembled crowds, the imposing ceremony, and the
awful bishop and all his clergy, came strongly and
distinctly before them.

Besides these, numbers of vehicles are bringing in
other rural neophytes. The carriages of the wealthy
drive rapidly and gaily on to inns and houses of
friends. Tilted wagons, gigs, ample cars, are all
freighted with similar burdens ; and many a strange,
old, lumbering cart, whose body is smeared with the
ruddy marl of the fields it has done service in, whose
wheels are heavy with the clinging mire of roads that
would make M'Adam aghast, rumbles along, dragged
by a bony and shaggy animal, that if it must be
honoured with the name of horse, is the very Helot
of horses. These open conveyances exhibit groups
of young girls, that in the lively air, and shaken to
and fro by the rocking of their vehicle, and the jost-
ling of chairs, look like beds of tulips nodding in a
strong breeze.

As you approach the great church the bustle be-
comes every moment more conspicuous. The clergy
are walking in that direction in their black gowns.
Groups of the families of the country clergy strike
your eyes. Venerable old figures with their sleek
and ruddy faces ; their black silk stockings glisten-
ing beneath their gowns ; their canonical hats set
most becomingly above, are walking on, the very
images of happiness, with their wives hanging on
their arms, and followed by lovely, genteel girls,

264 PRIESTCRAFT

and graceful, growing lads. As the rustics' aspects
brought all the spirit of the cottage and the farm to
your imagination, they bring all that of the village
parsonage. You are transported in a moment to the
most perfect little paradises which are to be found in the
world — the country dwellings of the English clergy.
Those sweet spots, so exactly formed for the "otium
cum dignitate." Those medium abodes, betwixt the
rudeness and vexations of poverty, and the cumbrous
state of aristocratic opulence. Those lovely and pic-
turesque houses, built of all orders and all fashions,
yet preserving the one definite, uniform character of
the comfortable, the pretensionless, and the accordant
with the scenery in which they are placed ; — houses,
some of old, framed timber, up which the pear and
the apricot, the pyracantha and the vine clamber;
or of old, grey, substantial stone ; or of more modern
and elegant villa architecture, with their roofs which,
whether of thatch or slate, or native grey stone, are
seen thickly screened from the north, and softened and
surmounted to the delighted eye with noble trees :
with their broad, bay windows, which bring all the
sunny glow of the south, at will, into the house ; and
around which the rose and jasmine breathe their de-
licious odours. Those sweet abodes, surrounded by
their bowery, shady, aromatic shrubberies, and plea-
sant old-fashioned glebe-crofts — homes in which, under
the influence of a wise, good heart, and a good system,
domestic happiness may be enjoyed to its highest
conception, and whence piety, and cultivation, and
health and comfort, and a thousand blessings to
the poor, may spread through the surrounding neigh-
bourhood. Such are the abodes brought before your
minds by the sight of the country clergy ; such are
thousands of their dwellings, scattered through this
great and beneficent country, — in its villages and

IN ALL AGES. 265

hidden nooks of scattered population, — amid its wild
mountains, and along its wilder coasts ; — endowed
by the laws with earthly plenty, and invested by the
bright heaven, and its attendant seasons, with the
freshest sunshine, the sweetest dews, the most grate-
ful solitude and balmy seclusion.

But the merry bells call us onward ; and lo ! the
mingled crowds are passing under that ancient and
time-worn porch. We enter, — and how beautiful
and impressive is the scene ! The whole of that
mighty and venerable fabric is filled, from side to side,
with a mixed, yet splendid congregation, — for the
rich and the poor, the superb and the simple, there
blend into one human mass, whose varieties are but
as the contrast of colours in a fine painting, — the
spirit of the tout en semble is the nobility of beauty.
The whole of that gorgeous assembly, on which the
eye rests in palpable perception of the wealth, the
refinement, and the elevation of the social life of our
country, is hushed in profound attention to the read-
ing of the services of the day by one of the clergy-
men. They are past ; — the bishop, followed by his
clergy, advances to the altar. The solemn organ
bursts forth with its thunder of harmonious sound,
that rolls through the arched roof above, and covers
every living soul with its billows of tumultuous
music, and with its appropriate depth of inexpres-
sible feeling, touches the secret springs of wonder
and mysterious gladness in the spirit ; and amid its
imperial tones the tread of many youthful feet is
heard in the aisle. You turn, and behold a scene that
brings the tears into your eyes, and the throb of
sacred sympathy into your heart. Are they crea-
tures of earth or of heaven ? Are they the every-
day forms which fill our houses, and pass us in the
streets, and till the solitary fields of earth, and per-

266 PRIESTCRAFT

form the homely duties of the labourer's cottage —
those fair, youthful beings, that bend down their bare
and beautiful heads beneath the hands of that solemn
and dignified old man 1 Yes, through the drops that
dim our eyes, and the surprise that dazzles them, we
discern the children of the rich and the poor kneel-
ing down together, to take upon themselves the
eternal weight of their own souls. There, side by
side, the sons and daughters of the hall, and the
sons and daughters of the hut of poverty, are kneel-
ing in the presence of God and man — acknowledging
but one nature, one hope, one heaven ; and our hearts
swell with a triumphant feeling of this homage wrung
from the pride of wealth, the arrogance of birth, and
the soaring disdain of refined intellect, by the vic-
torious might of Christianity. Yet, even in the
midst of this feeling, what a contrast is there in these
children! The sons and daughters of the fortunate,
with their cultured forms and cultured features — the
girls just budding into the beauty of early woman-
hood, in their white garbs, and with their fair hair so
simply, yet so gracefully disposed, — the boys, with
their open, rosy, yet declined countenances, and their
full locks, clustering in vigorous comeliness; — they
look, under the influence of the same feelings, like
the children of some more ethereal planet : while the
offspring of the poor, with their robust figures and
homely dresses ; with their hair, which has had no
such sedulous hands, full of love and leisure, to
mould it into shining softness — nay, that has, in many
instances, had no tending but that of the frosts and
winds, and the midsummer scorching of their daily,
out-of-door lives ; and with countenances in which
the predominant expressions are awe, and simple
credence ; these touch us with equal sympathy for
the hardships and disadvantages of their lot.

IN ALL AGES. 267

Successively over every bowed head those sacred
hands are extended, which are to communicate a
subtle but divine influence ; and how solemn is the
effect of that one grave and deliberate yet earnest
voice, which, in the absence of the organ-tones, in
the hushed and heart-generated stillness of the place,
is alone heard pronouncing the words of awful import
to every youthful recipient of the rite. 'T is done, —
again the tide of music rolls over us, fraught with
tenfold kindling of that spirit which has seized upon
us ; and amid its celestial exultings, that band of
youthful ones has withdrawn, and another has taken
its place. Thus it goes on till the whole have been
confirmed in the faith in which their sponsors vowed
to nurture them, and which they have now vowed to
maintain for ever. The bishop delivers his parting
exhortation, and solemnly charges them to return
home in a manner becoming the sacredness of the
occasion and of their present act. Filled with the
glow of purest feelings, breathing the very warmest
atmosphere of poetry and religious exaltation, we
rise up with our neighbours, and depart. We depart —
and the first breath of common air dissipates the
beautiful delusion in which we have been, for a short
space, entranced. We feel the rite to be beautiful
while we cease to think ; but the moment we come to
penetrate into the mind which lies beneath, it becomes
an empty dream. We feel that did our after con-
sciousness permit us to believe that he who adminis-
tered this rite was filled with its sanctity, and relied
implicitly on its efficacy, — that the youthful tribe of
neophytes were rightly prepared by the ministry of
their respective pastors, and possessed the simple
credence of past ages to give vitality to the office —
then, indeed, might it be in fact, what it can now
only appear for an instant. We feel, moreover,

268 PRIESTCRAFT

taking yet lower ground than this, that were the
clergy a body filled with the zeal of their calling,
they possess in this ceremony a means of powerful
influence. But I have hitherto spoken only of its
poetical and picturesque effect, and that effect endures
not a step beyond the church doors. At that point
the habitual apathy of the clergy converts this rite
into one of the most awful and hideous of mockeries.
The bishop charges the recipients to return home in
soberness and decorum ; but he should charge their
respective clergymen to conduct them thither. But
where are the clergy ? They are gone to dine with
the bishop, or their clerical brethren ; and what are
the morals of the youth to good dinners ? They have
turned the children over to the clerks. And where
are the clerks ? They have some matters of trade to
transact ; — some spades, or cart-saddles, or groceries
to buy — and what is the health of the children's
souls to spades, and cart-saddles, and groceries? —
they have turned the lambs of the flock over to the
schoolmasters. And where are the schoolmasters?
They, like their clerical lords, are gone to dine with
their brother dominies of the town, having reiterated
the injunction of the bishop with a mock-heroic
gravity, as highly, but not as well assumed as that of
the bishop himself, and with as little effect. While
they sit and discuss the merits of the last new treatise
of arithmetic or spelling, the work of some new Dil-
worth or Entick, their charges have squandered into
a dozen companies, and each, under the guidance of
some rustic Coryphceus, have surrounded as many
ale-house fires. They are as happy as their betters.
The loaf and cheese melt like snowballs before them ;
the stout ale is handed round to blushing damsels
by as many awkward, blushing swains. Hilarity
abounds — their spirits are kindled. The bishop, and

IN ALL AGES.

the church, and the crowd all vanish — or rather, their
weight is lifted from their souls, which rise from the
abstracted pressure with a double vivacity. Already
heated, they set forward on their homeward way At
every besetting ale-house the revel is renewed. Over
hill and dale they stroll on, a rude, roistering, and dis-
graceful rabble. For the effects of this confirmation
let any one inquire of parish overseers, and they will
tell him, that it is one of the most fruitful sources of
licentiousness and crime. The contagion of vice
spreads under such circumstances, with the fatal ra-
pidity of lightning. Young and modest natures which
otherwise would have shrunk from it and been safe,
are surprised, as it were, into sin, and shame, and
misery. Instead of a confirmation in Christianity, it
becomes the confirmation of the Devil. And this
clergymen know ; and yet with the same apathy
whence the evil has sprung, they continue to suffer
its periodical recurrence; and thus, for want of a little
zeal, and a little personal exercise of the good office
of a shepherd, they convert one of the fairest rites of
their church into one of the worst nuisances that
afflict our country.

270 PRIESTCRAFT

CHAPTER XX.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

Yet thus is the church, for all this noise of reformation,
left still unreformed. Milton.

Thus have we traversed the field of the world. We
have waded through an ocean of priestly enormities.
We have seen nations sitting in the blackness of
darkness, because their priests shut up knowledge in
the dark-lanterns of their selfishness. We have seen
slavery and ignorance blasting, under the guidance of
priestly hands, millions on millions of our race, and
making melancholy the fairest portions of the earth.
We have listened to sighs and the dropping of tears,
to the voice of despair, and the agonies of torture and
death ; we have entered dungeons, and found their
captives wasted to skeletons with the years of their
solitary endurance ; we have listened to their faint
whispers, and have found that they uttered the
cruelties of priests. We have stumbled upon mid-
night tribunals, and seen men stretched on racks ;
torn piecemeal with fiery pincers ; or plunged into
endless darkness by the lancing of their eyes ; and
have asked whose actions these were — and were
answered^the priests ! We have visited philoso-
phers, and found them carefully concealing their dis-
coveries, which would suddenly have filled the earth
with light, and power, and love, — because they knew

IN ALL AGES.

the priests would turn on them in their greedy
malice, and doom them to fire or gibbet. We have
walked among women of many countries, and have
found thousands lost to shame, rolling wanton eyes,
uttering hideous words ; we have turned from them
with loathing, but have heard them cry after us, as
we went — ■" Our hope is in the priests, — they are our
lovers, and defenders from eternal fire." We have
entered for shelter from this horror the abodes of
domestic love, and have stood petrified to find there
all desecrated — purity destroyed — faith overthrown —
happiness annihilated ; — and it was the work of
priests ! Finally, we have seen kings, otherwise
merciful, instigated by the devilish logic of priest-
craft, become the butchers of their people ; queens,
otherwise glorious, become tyrants and executioners ;
and people, who would otherwise have lived in blessed
harmony, warring on each other with inextinguishable
malice and boundless blood-thirstiness ; and behold !
it was priestcraft, that, winding amongst them like a
poisonous serpent, maddened them with its breath,
and exulted with fiendish eyes over their horrible
carnage. All this we have beheld, and what is the
mighty lesson it has taught 1 It is this — that if the
people hope to enjoy happiness, mutual love, and
general prosperity, they must carefully snatch from
the hands of their spiritual teachers, all political
power, and confine them solely to their legitimate
task of Christian instruction. Let it always bel
borne in mind, that, from the beginning of the world I
to this time, there never was a single conspiracy
of schoolmasters against the liberties and the
mind of man : but in every age, the priests, the
spiritual schoolmasters, have been the most subtle,
the most persevering, the most cruel enemies and
oppressors of their species. The moral lesson is

272 PRIESTCRAFT

stamped on the destinies of every nation, — the in-
ference is plain enough to the dullest capacity. Your
preachers, while they are preachers alone, are harm-
less as your schoolmasters ; — they have no motive to
injure your peace ; but let them once taste power, or
the fatal charm of too much wealth, and the conse-
quent fascinations of worldly greatness, and like the
tiger when it has once tasted blood, they are hence-
forth your cruellest devourers and oppressors.

We may be told that there is no such pernicious
tendency now in our establishment, — that it is mild,
merciful, and pious : my attention may be tri-
umphantly turned to the great men it has produced ;
and the number of humble, sincere, and exemplary
clergymen who adorn their office at the present day.

Much of this I am not intending to deny ; but if it
be said, there is no evil tendency in the church, I
there differ. The present corruption, the present
admission, even of the clergy, of the necessity of
reform, is sufficient refutation ; and if it does not now
imprison, burn, and destroy, we owe it to the refine-
ment of the age, as the history of the past world will
amply shew. Human nature is for ever the same;
it is the nature of priestcraft to render the clergy
tyrants, and the people slaves ; it always has been
so; it always will be; the only preventive lies in
the general knowledge of the community. That the
church has produced great men, who will not admit,
that remembers that Plato of preachers — Jeremy
Taylor, Selden, Tillotson, Hooker, and others ? but
that it would have produced far more such men, had
it been more thoroughly reformed, placed on a more
broad and Christian basis, is equally certain.

That there are numbers of excellent clergy, I as
readily admit. I honour and love the good men who,
in many an obscure village, in the midst of a poor

IN ALL AGES. 273

id miserable population, spend their days with no
Lotive but the fulfilment of their duty ; cheerfully
sacrificing all those refined pleasures, — that refined
society which their character of mind, and their own
delightful tastes, would naturally prompt and entitle
them to. Who do this, badly paid, worse encouraged ;
compelled by their compassion to despoil themselves
of a great part of their meagre salaries, to stop the
cries of the terrible necessities by which they are
surrounded; — who do this, many of them, at the
expense of remaining solitary, unallied individuals ;
unmarried, — childless: or if husbands and fathers,
expending their wives' comforts, their children's
education on the poverty, which the wealthy incum-
bents neither look on, nor relieve. When I observe
them do this, and all the while see their parishes
drained by some fat pluralist, or sinecurist, who
scorns to take the cure of souls whom he never goes
near, except to take the living, and appoint his jour-
neyman— when I see them look on wealth, dignities,
and preferments showered on the well-born, well-
allied, or well-impudenced, while there is a gulph
between themselves and their attainment as impassable
as that between Dives and Lazarus, — then do I indeed
love and honour such men ; and it is for such that I
would see the church reformed; and the road to
greater comfort and more extensive usefulness thrown
open. I would not, as the bees do, appoint a killing
day for the drones, but I would have no more
admitted to the hive.

There are many excellent men, we admit ; but are
the multitude such ? We shall undoubtedly be told
so. The whole body will be represented as the most
disinterested, holy, beneficent, industrious, wonder-
working, salvation- spreading body imaginable. In
their own periodicals and pamphlets, they are, in fact,

274 PRIESTCRAFT

represented so. Whether they be so or not, let one of
the greatest intellects of the age, and one of their own
warm friends testify —

The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade :
Rank scoffers some ; but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods, or to know their truth.
Coleridge.

And let one great truth be marked. — The prevalent
character of a public body stamps itself in the public
mind as faithfully as a man's face in a mirror. There
may be exceptions to a body, and they may be con-
siderable : but when that body becomes proverbial;
when it is, as a whole, the object of the jokes, the
sarcasms, and contempts of the people, that body is
not partially, but almost wholly corrupt. Now such is
the character of the church of England clergy, in the
mind of the British people. We may be told it is the
vulgar opinion, and the vulgar are wrong. In judg-
ments of this kind the vulgar, as they are called, are
right. They always were so : but this too will be denied.
A body in its corruption, never did, and never will
admit it ; its only feeling will be anger, not repent-
ance. When the Romish church was utterly cor-
rupted ; when its priests and monks were the scandal
and the scorn of all men, did the church admit it ?
Did it reform them ? When Luther's artillery was
thundering against it, and shaking it to its foundations,
did it admit the justice of his attack ? No ! it only
turned in rage, and would have devoured him, as it
devoured all other reformers. When he had knocked
down many of its pillars, blown up many of its
bastions, laid bare to public scorn and indignation
its secret fooleries and horrors, it relaxed not an
atom of its pretensions, it abated not a jot of its

IN ALL AGES. 275

pride, it stayed not its bloody arm, shunned not to
proclaim itself still holy, invulnerable and supreme.
While Dante and Bocaccio laughed at its errors, or
declaimed against its abuses in its own territories ;
while Erasmus in the Netherlands, Chaucer in Eng-
land, and Sir David Lindsay, the Chaucer of Scotland,
were pouring ineffable and everlasting ridicule on its
monks, its priests and pardoners, they were told
that theirs was but the retailing of vulgar ignorance
and envy ; — but what followed ? Time proclaimed it
Truth. The corrupted tribes were chased away by
popular fury and scorn, and have left only a name
which is an infamy and a warning.

From age to age, the great spirits of the world
have raised their voices and cried, Liberty ! but the
cry has been drowned by the clash of arms, or the
brutish violence of uncultured mobs. Homer and
Demosthenes in Greece, Cicero in Rome, the poets
and martyrs of the middle ages, our sublime Milton,
the maligned, but immoveable servant and sufferer of
freedom, who laid down on her altar his peace, his
comfort, and his very eyesight, our Hampdens and
Sidneys, the Hofersand Bolivars of other lands, have,
from age to age, cried, Liberty ! but ignorance and
power have been commonly too much for them.
But at length, light from the eternal sanctuary of
truth has spread over every region; into the depths
and the dens of poverty it has penetrated ; the scholar
and the statesman are compelled to behold in the
marriage of Christianity and Knowledge, the promise
of the establishment of peace, order, and happiness,
— the reign of rational freedom. We are in the very
crisis in which old things are to be pulled down, and
new ones established on the most ancient of founda-
tions,— justice to the people. To effect safely this
momentous change, requires all the watchfulness and
the wisdom of an intelligent nation. The experience

276 PRIESTCRAFT

of the world's history, warns us to steer the safe
middle course, between the despotism of the aristocracy
•and the mob, between the highest and the lowest
orders of society. The intelligence, and not the
wealth or multitudes of a state, must give the law
of safety; — and to this intelligence I would again
and finally say — be warned by universal history !
Snatch from your priesthood all political power ;
abandon all state religion ; place Christianity on its
own base — the universal heart of the people ; let your
preachers be, as your schoolmasters, simply teachers ;
eschew reverend justices of the peace ; very reverend
politicians ; and right reverend peers and legislators,
as you would have done the reverend knights, and
marquises, and dukes of the past ages. They must
neither meddle with your wills, nor take the tenth of
your corn ; they must neither tax you to maintain
nouses in which to preach against you, and read your
damnation in creeds of which no one really knows
the origin; nor persecute you, nor seize your goods
for Easter offerings and smoke-money. The system
by which they tax you at your entry into the world ;
tax you at your marriage ; tax you at your death ;
suffer you not descend into your native earth without
a fee, must be abolished. The system by which you
are made to pay for everything, and to have a voice
in nothing — not even in the choice of a good minis-
ter, or the dismissal of a vile and scandalous de-
bauchee ; by which you are made the helpless puppet
of some obtuse squire, and the prey of some greedy
and godless priest, must have an end.

On this age, the happiness of centuries — the pros-
perity of Truth depends ; — let it not disappoint the
expectations, and mar the destinies of millions !

THE END.

WILLIAM HOWITT'S
VINDICATION

OF HIS

"HISTORY OF PRIESTCRAFT/

AGAINST THE ATTACK OF

ARCHDEACON WILKINS.

FOURTH EDITION.

" Artn't in pulpit now ! When art a got up there, I never
mind what dost say ; but I won't be priest-ridden, nor taught
how to behave myself by thee." — Squire Western.

" 1 took especial care not to give the slightest cause of offence
to the clergy : for I have always endeavoured to be at peace
with that body, knowing from experience,

Quantee animis ccelestibus irae.

There are no men who bear so ill to be told of their vices as
those who thunder against vice in public ; and none persecute
with greater bitterness than those who are always declaiming
against persecution."- — Lewis Holberg.

" There are no labourers in the demolition of a bad institution
like its own friends. They are like insects in a rotten tree:
roused by external alarm to activity, they bustle about and
scatter the trunk which holds them into dust. Such men put a
patch of new arguments into the old garment of corruption, and
the rent is made worse." — History of Priestcraft.

WILLIAM HOWHTS VINDICATION.

TO ARCHDEACON WILKINS.

Sir,

I think you will not be surprised, if I address
you in a very unceremonious style. Having charged me
in the most gratuitous and unwarrantable manner with
Deism, Devilishness, and all manner of malignity, you
have voluntarily abandoned the courtesies of society, and
have no right to expect from me more than the common
decorum due, not to yourself, but to the public before whom
we plead. It was not my intention to take any notice of
the abuse, which my History of Priestcraft was sure to
elicit; and accordingly, I should have passed by your angry
tirade as I have done those of periodicals and newspapers,
had you not turned aside from the book to charge me with
Deism. This false accusation, and the assiduity with which
it is circulated in all possible directions, make it necessary
for the fair reputation of my children, that I should stand
forward and deny it. In few words then, I declare my
belief in the great leading doctrines of the Society of Friends;
and what is still more to the point, of the New Testament.
There are some matters of practice ; as for instance, those
of 'language and dress, in which I interpret our principles
differently to some ; but these principles I conscientiously
hold, for they are no other than those of plainness and
simplicity. Now, if you are hardy enough to charge the
whole Society of Friends with Deism, — that society which
you profess to deem nearer the standard of the primitive
b2

<t VINDICATION.

church than most; and if you are hardy enough to persist
in your shameless assertion after this clear and solemn
denial, you must, in every honest mind, place yourself
beyond the pale of all honour and respect: if you even
retract it, you must still bear the brand of the calumniator
and moral assassin.

As the writing of a dignitary of a Church which mono-
polizes all the collegiate endowments of the nation, your
letter has astonished me. The miserable poverty of its
style, the utter incoherence and most illogical wanderings
of what is meant for argument, make it, as a reply to my
book, perfectly contemptible. It has not been my lot to
come in contact with a clerical composition so very wretched
for some time, excepting the Sermon of a certain Bishop,
which, in one of my " Sunday rambles," I chanced lately
to hear in Westminster Abbey. Whether there be some-
thing in the process of ascent in the Church, similar to that
of matter in the process of sublimation, in that laboratory
of which I shall speak with you presently, I know not;
but it has been frequently remarked that there is much
barrenness on the high places of the church. Such a mass
of dryness — of threadbare and thriftless common-places, —
was this right reverend father in God's sermon, that I do
not even hesitate to give your letter the preference — for it
is rich in one particular — in abuse. In this respect, how-
ever, it has issued too late from the press to serve your pur-
pose. The malignant bitterness of heart which it betrays,
shews that the nature of the priest is not changed. It
breathes of the same spirit of vengeance which formerly
doomed the assailants of the church to fire and fagot ; it
speaks plainly enough, that, as the law will not now permit
you to murder those who dispute your rule, you will at least
attempt to murder their reputations. The vindictive temper
and the abusive language of the established clergy, however,
are now so notorious, that, as you may see by reference to
the notices at the end of this letter, before they open their
mouths, their very words can be, and are predicted. The
stale manoeuvre, as it has recently been happily termed, of
crying " atheist ! deist! leveller!" &c. &c. is become point-
less, and in one sense only useful. It is highly useful to
the Cause of truth and liberty, by shewing to the public

VINDICATION. 0

most demonstratively, the real character of the men who
officiate in the national temples as the ministers of the
meek and tender Christ. It shews beautifully the nature
of state religions, the forced hire of which is converted to
poison in the hands of those who receive it, and renders
them rabid against all who assert that liberty by whose
inspiration England has become a mighty and most goodly
realm. If I had desired one proof, as more triumphant
and convincing than another, of the justice of my strictures
on the state of the church, and the temper of the clergy, it
would have been the publication of letters such as yours.
Let us examine it a little : you open it in this remarkable
style. "You, sir, are a quaker, — you, sir, are a poet — you,
sir, are a chemist." Why truly, these are facts : and who
doubts them? The two first propositions are pretty well
known to all literary readers ; and as regards the third, a
little more anon. Now if I were to address you with —
" You, sir, are a priest of the Establishment, — you, sir, are
archdeacon of Nottingham; you, sir, are rector of St.
Mary's and of St. Paul's; you, sir, are prebendary of
Southwell, and incumbent of the livings of Lowdham,
Farnsfield,* Wing," &c. &c; what would be thought, I ask,
of the stilted pedantry of my style ? and what possible end
could it answer, except to shew that you are a pluralist, and
therefore, notwithstanding your zeal, one of your own
church's worst enemies — for its " worst enemies are those
of its own house." But we shall not pause at mere sin-
gularities of style. Your third very self-evident assertion
is — " You, sir, are a chemist. But if poetry be confined to
certain limits, chemistry is not less restricted to hers ; and
these you have overstepped, by quitting your laboratory and
your shop, to cull the weeds and poison of Jeremy Ben-
tham, of the Republican and Arian Milton, of Hume,
Gibbon, the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews, a long
file of democratic newspapers, and to complete the climax,
of Mr. Beverley!"

* Farnsfield living is about 300Z. a year: by the last census
it contains 1002 inhabitants; yet you pocket the money, and do
not furnish even a resident curate. The law provides 300/. a
year for a minister ; but if a man be dying, no minister is to be
had within four miles. Are priests born without consciences!

VINDICATION.

And, indeed, now I think of it, what business had I to
quit my laboratory, and indulge in the pleasures of litera-
ture? in those pursuits which, according to Cicero, " adole-
scentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant,
adversis perfugium ac solatium prebent; delectant domi,
non impediunt foris ; pernoctant nobiscum, peregi'inantur,
rusticantur?" What business had I to do this? It is true,
little as I have done, I have already had my reward, in the
life and strength and joy of my own spirit, and in the
communion into which it has brought me with some of the
first of living minds. What business had Burns to leave his
fields, where he

walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain side?

Why left he his fathoming of ale firkins, to write the merry
Tarn O'Shanter ; the beautiful picture of humble and pious
Scottish life, the Cottar's Saturday Night; and songs and
small poems, to whose quick spirit the heart of the Scottish
exile, " encamped by Indian rivers wild," throbs tumult-
uously,

And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls ?

And what business had Hogg to march out of Ettrick forest,
and go waving his grey tartan up the streets of Edinburgh,
strong in his marvellous resolve, to enrol his name amid the
poets of the land? Oh, James! James ! " with whom hast
thou left those few sheep in the wilderness ? 1 know thy
pride, and the naughtiness of thy heart!" What business
hadst thou at the Queen's Wake ? At the court of Queen
Hynde ? — reclining in the glen, listening to the unearth]
words of the pure Kilmeny; dancing with the fairies; tell
ing of the Brownie of Bodsbeck; or singing one strong an
peerless song of God's Omnipresence ? What business had
Allan Ramsay to go before thee, chanting of the Gentle
Shepherd? — or a far greater Allan to come after thee, from
the depths of Nithsdale, and casting down his mallet and
chisel amongst his native rocks, dare to enter London and
seat himself amid all the fair handiworks of Chantry?

I

'a

d

\

VINDICATION. 7

What had he to do with collecting the Songs of Scotland ;
or making mighty ballads of his own?

A wet sheet and a flowing sea —

What were they to him ? — he was overstepping his natural
functions. O, honest Allan Cunningham ! what business
hadst thou with these things? And what business had
William Roscoe to leave his mother's tap; to give over
carrying out her pots of beer, and to go and write the lives
of Popes and Italian princes ; to ennoble his own mind ; to
cast a splendour over his native town, and to leave a he-
ritage to his children richer than a patent of nobility ? And
what business had those shoemakers, Bloomfield the
Farmer's Boy, and GhTord, the terror of dunces and the
pride of Tories, to quit their stalls and dare to become
famous? And those drapers, or drapers' sons, Pope and
Southey, and honest Izaak Walton, what wrong-headedness
was theirs ! What right had Izaak to haunt the Dove, and
Shawford Brook, and the Thames, with his rod and line,
and go, in summer meadows, making sermons to himself of
such beautiful and serene piety, as seldom issues from the
lithographic press for the use of state priests? He has
written the lives of certain Church worthies, too ; and yet
it is very questionable, that presumption of his. Those
apothecaries, Crabbe and Keats, why did they not stick to
their vocation, and avoid spoiling us with so much good
poetry ? What pity is it that our prudent Archdeacon was
not present when Ben Jonson threw down his hod of
mortar, and Shakspeare left off poaching, to warn them
against the sin of writing dramas? Could he have prevailed
on John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart, and Walter
Scott, and Sharon Turner, to abide by their parchments
and pleas, what reading of multitudinous volumes might
we have been spared! Washington left his farming, to
liberate his country, and Franklin his types, to frame a
constitution for her, and Dr. Wilkins was not at hand to
cry, " Overstep not the proper limits of your professions !"
From the ranks of trade, from the very peasantry of the
country, ascend to eminence clergymen, lawyers, and mer-
chants; three-fourths of our nobility have sprung from
the same source ; and yet the enterprise of these men is
very questionable, for numbers of them, with the happy

8 VINDICATION.

daring of Sir Richard Arkwright, reached distinction
overstepping the proper limits of their original professions.
Nothing, therefore, can be more questionable, for Arch-
deacon Wilkins questions it !

Yes, sir, without further irony, you have pronounced an
atrocious libel on your country and your countrymen. You
have attempted to sneer away from the gates of science
and literature all those who are contaminated with trade.
You have outraged what is the peculiar glory of England
— for you may go over all ages and all nations — and in
antiquity pitch on an Esop or a Terence ; in modern times
on a Rousseau or a Burger, but it is alone in England that
so numerous a host of the sons of genius rise up from the
plough and the spinning-jenny, and take their stations,
with bold and unblushing brows, amongst the great and
shining lights of the land. Nothing is so expressive of the
contracting and blinding influence of priestcraft, as the fact
that you do not look upon the venerable Milton as the
sublime poet, as a man whose noble sentiments will influence
the spirits of countless generations — as all other men look
upon him — the glory of the nation ; nor as that grand old
Tory and stanch lover of the church, Wordsworth, looks
on him : —

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of Earth's best blood, — have titles manifold.

You only, through the mist of sectarian prejudice, see in
him "the republican and Arian Milton "!! ! Well! wel-
come be ye to a faith which shuts the heart to sympathy
with all that is noble, and embitters it with hatred of all
that is independent.

I think I have said enough to obtain even your future
permission for men in trade to write, although I am told,
such is the despicable spirit of caste in the ministers of the
poor Jesus of Nazareth, who had not where to lay his head,
that they do not permit even those branches of the clerical
families, which form their very select circle in little
cathedral towns, who become attached to trade, to enter
that charmed ring. This contemptible picture of clerical

INDICATION.

arrogance, I receive too from a pious young clergyman.
But this is a digression ; let us examine the heads of your
letter seriatim.

And first for a specimen of your logic. — To my words,
" If a nation is to patronize and support one religion in
preference to another, it ought surely to be the religion of
the nation :" you add, "If this be just, the good work of
the Church of England, and of those sects which send out
missionaries to India and elsewhere, ought to cease. The
idols of Juggernaut, and the prophet of Mecca, should no
longer be denounced. The Hindoos and Arabs, Turks,
Moors, and Infidels and Heretics, should be left helpless in
their own countries, to wander in their own darkness, &c.
&c." Now all this grand assemblage of Turks, Hindoos,
Moors, Infidels, and what not, which you have convened
in the upper rooms of your imagination, is very much in
the predicament of those unfortunate people collected to
an auction some time ago at Edinburgh, who fell through
the floor : by knocking out the little peg, the word if, all
your miscellaneous convocation of strange people tumbles
inevitably through the floor. Your reasoning is founded
on that very unsubstantial word if. I say if a nation
must patronize and support a religion, it ought to be the
religion of the nation : but I contend that it ought not to
support one at all in preference to another; and that, as
you too well know, is the great object and drift of my whole
book. If, indeed, a religion must be supported by the state,
it ought to be assuredly the religion of the majority. No-
thing can be so contrary to the plainest justice, so utterly
abhorrent to the whole of our human rights, to the whole
of our nature, as the forcing a man's conscience contrary
to, or without its conviction. Be the multitude of a nation
Turks or Infidels, or whatever holders of strange creeds,
what right has any government to force them to adopt and
maintain a religion that they disapprove? Reason with
them — preach to them the excellency of Christianity as
much as you please, but by no means force them to profess
or support what they do not believe.

Is it then " the good work of the church and dissenting
missionaries " to force the consciences of those to whom
they go ? I had always an idea that they went to preach

10 VINDICATION.

and persuade; but if their object be to seek establishments,
if they have the covert design of prevailing upon the govern-
ments of the countries they visit to set Christianity over
the head of their people, without their concurrence, or their
knowledge and admission of its principles, then it is high
time that our government recalled those violators of con-
science and of the rights of man. But it is the peculiar
habit of the Established clergy continually to confound
Christianity with their own church. They do not seem
capable of comprehending, that Christianity may be suffered
to stand on its own basis, to grow with its own strength,
and recommend itself by reason of its own excellence to
the hearts and minds of a people, till it becomes eventually
established in a nation, independent of power or party.
And in this spirit you assert that " no nation or country has
ever flourished that has not supported an Established reli-
gion." Alas ! that it should be so ! I have shewn by what
means all nations have come to be saddled with these state
religions by the despotism of priests and kings. If we
cannot shew that nations have flourished without state
religions, it is for the simple reason that tyranny has never
suffered them to be without. We can however shew that
State religions do not necessarily preserve realms, or make
them flourish — they have not that most conservative effect
— as may be seen most lamentably in Spain and Ireland.
You do however recollect — America — what state priest can
ever forget it ? You admit it to be an exception — but con-
sole yourself that it is but in its infancy — an infancy of two
hundred years ! truly a very patriarchal infancy ! America
must always be a sore spectacle to the eyes of an Estab-
lished priest, and whatever you may pretend, will not be
lost on the British people. You are rejoiced to see fana-
ticism there. Look at home, it is equally abundant here,
spite of our establishment: and however you may decry
the religious state of America, the united testimony of the
most impartial travellers is, and I place my own brother
amongst them, that sober, rational, and devout religious
feeling and conduct abound as much there as in any nation
in the world.

I am accused by you of referring to the British Magazine
for a statement of the bishops' incomes, and yet of over-

VINDICATION. 11

rating those incomes 15,000/. by the shewing of that maga-
zine. The calculation is your own, not mine — I merely
transcribed the table of their separate incomes, and if it
conflict with other statements of the magazine, I am not
responsible for that — that truly would be a woful doom,
for such a brood of unfledged parsons as scribble in that
profound publication are not elsewhere to be met with.
You accuse me of overstating also the whole property and
income of the church. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
you say, has shewn its real amount by "fuller and more
correct estimates." It was but last week that his Lordship
confessed that his ecclesiastical estimates had misled him !
I felt convinced that this would be the case ; first, from the
wondrously small sum made of it by clerical calculation,
as opposed to all other calculations ; and secondly by the
temptation of the clergy to do so ; and by their known
carelessness of truth. Start not at the imputation — I shall
presently shew you are not an exception — and I shall shew
moreover other curious matter. I doubt the accuracy of
the clerical returns on this ground : — when the govern-
ment circular was sent to the clergy, demanding an exact
and faithful return of their incomes, then did these conscien-
tious men set eagerly to work to concert how this return was
to be made, and how it was to be made to appear as small as
possible. These matters will be found particularly discussed
in the numbers for June, July, and September, 1832. —
One man seems wonderfully aggrieved that he is not per-
mitted by the queries of the Church Revenue Commission to
deduct from his income, before given in, the salary of the
curate ; the poor's-rates that his tithe-holders pay for him ;
and a rent for his house, but thinks they may venture to
deduct the charge of collecting his income ; and others
think they may deduct their charities; and others the
interest of the 'purchase-money of the advowson of their
livings ! By these various means some of them actually
throw their livings into debt to themselves ; as one, for in-
stance, in the June number, 175/. Let it be remembered
that these generous fellows, who thus magnanimously
maintain their own livings — yet shew, that those livings are
not worth less in the gross than five or six hundred a year.
What was to be expected from " fuller and more correct

12 VINDICATION.

estimates " made by such men, under such impressions 1
You conclude this paragraph by asking, " Are these proofs
of the sincerity of your motives to spread truth and justice?"
O yes ! indeed they are !

You now touch on the subject of consecration ; and make
this statement: " Now, sir, this superstitious belief, and all
this priestcraft, by which the rich and poor, for so many
ages to the present hour, have been led to prefer a con-
secrated spot of ground for the interment of the dead, arises
from this ; that it is congenial with the feelings of both the
poor and rich, that the place of sepulture should, in the
first instance, be made sacred, by prayer offered up to God
on their behalf by their chief priest, and by a perpetual
exclusive dedication of the soil for such holy purpose."

I must take the liberty to deny entirely that the real cause
of consecration arises from its being congenial to the feelings
of both rich and poor, that the place should be first made
sacred by the prayers of the priest. It is, unquestionably,
congenial to the feelings of all men to desire that their
remains, and those of their relatives and friends, should
repose in ground guarded- from violation and change ; but
it does not follow that prelatical consecration is the only
or best means of arriving at this end. If we are to argue
on what is congenial to the feelings of men, we must argue
on the ground of our common nature ; and if so, what is
congenial to the natural feelings of a Churchman is equally
congenial to the natural feelings of a Quaker. Now we have
no such ceremonies. We desire that our dead should be
buried with the solemn decorum that is appropriate to the
occasion ; we desire that our burial grounds shall be secured
from intrusion and desecration ; but we find in the feelings
of our common nature, sufficient sanctity for this purpose.
And where, let me ask, are there burial-grounds which pos-
sess more perfect security 1 Some of them now lie in soli-
tary, and, of themselves, forsaken and unprotected places
in the country, from Friends having, through their com-
mercial habits, and in order to escape the plague of
tithes, now generally migrated into towns; yet, they are
as unmolested, and as inviolably preserved from insult or
invasion by the solemn sanctity of death, as if all the bishops
of all the churches in Europe had muttered over them. If

I

VINDICATION. 13

then, as it clearly appears, prelatical consecration is not
required by our common nature, this feeling must be an
engrafted feeling, and have become congenial to Episcopa-
lians by habit and priestly inculcation, not by nature.

You proceed, — " In the next place, they know that the
wisdom of the legislature has provided, that such soil, so set
apart and so consecrated, shall not be desecrated ; shall not
be again appropriated to any worldly purpose. And the
same of their churches ; for it is not an uncommon event,
from various causes, that a meeting is literally converted
from 'a house of prayer into a house of merchandize ;' the
State has carefully guarded against any such occurrence in
the temples and cemeteries of the Establishment." You
add, — " By this operation, a consecrated spot of ground is
changed from mutable to immutable property."

I pass your assertion, that you consecrate places of wor-
ship and of burial in obedience to the directions of both
the Old and the New Testament, because in the Old Tes-
tament there is little to the purpose, except the dedication
of the Temple, and in the New absolutely nothing; and
proceed to declare, that if you can shew that any such effect,
as stated above, is produced by your consecration; if you
can shew that by it " a spot of ground is changed from
mutable to immutable property," so that " it cannot again
be appropriated to any worldly purpose;" then we will
admit that it has some use. But if I shall shew that it
does produce no such effect ; that it does not protect fabric
or soil from the invasion of the strong and the bold; that
it does not prevent them becoming again appropriated to
any worldly purpose, then all your arguments for its use
fall to the ground. It will be then shewn to be a work of
supererogation ; and that you have set aside the eternal
influences of our nature, to substitute unavailing rites, —
rites, moreover, inspiring false views and feelings in the
people, and burdensome to their pockets.

Has, then, consecration effected these purposes? Did it
at the Reformation protect churches, abbeys, and cemeteries
from the daring and rapacious hand of Henry VIII.?
Where are the splendid piles of Malmsbury, Glastonbury,
Battle, Waltham, Malvern, Lantony, Rivaux, Fountains,
Kirkstall, &c. ? Where are numerous churches? Where

14 VINDICATION.

are the cemeteries of scores of conventual buildings? — O !
you will say, these were broken up by a violent convul-
sion, and by lawless men. Well, then, where is the efficacy
of your consecration ? It is against the shock of such con-
vulsions, against the rapacity of the avaricious, and the
hands of bold, bad men, that you seek security. There
wants none against peaceful times, peaceful and temperate
people. I repeat it, the feelings of our common huma-
nity are ample guarantee in ordinary cases. But these
noble places, consecrated by prelatical hands, are fallen, —
these cemeteries are desecrated ; are become the property
of laymen ; and are appropriated to any and many worldly
purposes.

What availed your consecration against the Protector
Somerset, in the reign of that pious youth, Edward VI. ?
What availed it against his pulling down, in London, three
episcopal houses, two churches, a chapel, a cloister, and a
charnel-house, to clear the site for his palace, and supply
materials for it? How availed it, when he carried away
the bones by cart-loads, and threw them into a pit in
Bloomsbury? What availed it against John Knox, in
Scotland, when, animated by his fiery eloquence, the
people rose, and tore to fragments the magnificent cathedral
of St. Andrews, and which now stands a melancholy ruin
on a melancholy coast? What availed it against the
troopers of Cromwell, who turned your churches into
stables, as completely as you represent meeting-houses to
be turned into houses of merchandize? Yet all these people
were men ; they had the common feelings of men ; they
had a vehement, though erratic sense of piety, — but they
had outgrown the engrafted feelings supplied by priest-
craft; and, in their wrath against that power, they set all
artificial restraints at nought: ere the natural feeling of
reverence for such objects had time to revive in their
bosoms, they committed many abominable outrages.

If your consecration be an influential safeguard against
churches and cemeteries being again converted to ordinary
purposes, what is the reason that Flawford church has dis-
appeared, and its burial-ground become a common field?
It is true the grave-stones remain, but it is used for all the
worldly purposes of a field, and for nothing more. What

VINDICATION.

15

has become of Bradmore church too, once consecrated, hut

now gone? What of the cemeteries of the abbeys and

riaries of this town and neighbourhood? They are all

now, in spite of consecration, desecrated, and devoted to

le common uses of life.

If burial-grounds, under the mysterious influence of con-
secration, can, as you assert, be thenceforth only appro-
priated to the uses for which they are consecrated, then,
ibundance of churchyards are consecrated to many a good
jame of marbles and hop-scotch; and were formerly to
that of football, after Sunday service ; and St. Nicholas's
churchyard in this town, is consecrated to a certain odd
little Shetland pony, which regularly pastures there; to
ly nothing of your own churchyard, from which a piece is
cut off, fenced out with wall and palisades, and converted
to an ordinary walk, often used for very ordinary purposes.

You say that no charge is made by the clergy for conse-
cration. Suppose we admit it. Suppose neither bishop
lor incumbent is benefited by it;* — suppose it merely an
expense of the form of law; it still is an expense to the
jeople, incurred for what I have now shewn to be super-
luous and unavailing; and it is equally clear that it is
incurred by the Bishop's Court, an integral and inseparable
part of that great priestly system which is fixed on the
nation ; and it is of little consequence by whose hands the
people's money is taken, if it be taken for the system. It
matters little to the man who is taxed, whether the king or
or the king's servant is fed by his contribution — it is gone.
When you are separated from the state, as you will one
day be, then you will have a great right to impose what-
ever doctrine, ceremony, or tax upon your voluntary adhe-
rents that they will permit, and no one else will have a
right to complain : but so long as you are a part of the
state, we shall have a right to criticise your customs, and
denounce expenses incurred for that which is worth nothing.

There is, then, sufficient sanctity about the place of
human sepulture in itself. When we enter one, however
lonely and exposed, what are the feelings and the senti-

* Yet bishops demand from 1 00/. to 300/. for consecrating a
church — who gets this?

IG

VINDICATION.

ments that impress us ? Do we think, at such a time, of
the forms and the words by which they were consecrated?
No ! there spring up feelings of so much higher a nature,
that the memory of them would be cast away as an un-
worthy intrusion. In the wilds of Scotland I have suddenly
come upon an ancient cemetery. Not a house or human
being has been within view. The turf, the enclosing
mound, the drooping stones, have all worn the grey aspect
of antiquity; yet, hallowed by the solemnity of death, it
has lain in the wide, brown wilderness in most inviolate
security. When I sate down in this place, what were my
thoughts ? They were of the awful mystery of our nature
— of the common penalty of death — of the everlasting
regions of unknown being which lie beyond. They were
of the life, the thoughts, the passions which once agitated
this now silent mass ; and of the inseparable idea that my
own lot would be one day as theirs. They were, that many
of these very mouldering bodies had once stood up and done
battle against the bloody despotism of your church, and
invested themselves with the glories of the patriot and the
martyr! — Let us change the subject; — it is not I who have
desecrated it, but you, who have buried the consecrating
influences of God's awful law of mortality and man's lot,
under the cold forms of a priestly system.

You challenge me to point out a single case in which " a
clergyman ever refused to perform the burial service over
any human creature whatever, that died by the visitation of
God.:' What may be your object in sending forth this
singular challenge, I pretend not to comprehend, although
you pay me the highest of mortal compliments — that
which the Jews paid to Christ — of " having a devil;" but
whatever be your motive, I accept your challenge with all
my heart : and remember, if it turn out to your discredit,
it is you who have begged the infliction. I tell you then
that I have heard of such cases. I have heard, often
enough, of clergymen refusing to inter a corpse till the fee
was in hand ; I have heard too of those who, when the fee
was in hand, have cut the service very short for the poor ;
but there is one case, which, as it concerns both your
church and mine, and is besides attended with very melan-
choly circumstances, you are most cordially welcome to.

VINDICATION. 17

Amongst the persons lost in the wreck of the Rothsay
Castle steam packet, off Beaumaris, in August, 1831, was
Alexander Wheeler, a member of the Society of Friends.
His body, when found, was in a state that rendered it
peculiarly desirable that it should be interred with as little
delay as possible; but the clergyman of Dygyfylchi abso-
lutely refused to bury him, because he had not been bap-
tised! Considering the circumstances of the case, the
sudden and awful loss of lives that had just taken place,
— the indescribable distress into which it had plunged
numbers of families, the already sufficiently lacerated feel-
ings of the relatives of the deceased — one would have
thought that a man could not have been found so sensitive
to the dead forms of his priesthood, so callous to all the
nobler sentiments of humanity, as to refuse to commit the
corpse to the ground — but so it was, and that too in spite
of the natural indignation excited in the popular mind.
The friends of the deceased, in disgust, set out for Liverpool
with his body, and my own brother-in-law helped to bear
him to his grave. I hope that fact is quite to your taste.

Now for Simony. — You doubt my clearly understanding
the common acceptation of the word simony. If it be not
simony for a priest to purchase the presentation to a living,
instead of receiving it as a free and sacred gift — then I do
not understand it. If it be not simony for a patron to sell
the presentation of such living to a clergyman, instead of
giving it freely, then I do not understand it. You, how-
ever, declare, that " what I have affirmed of this crime, as
commonly committed by the clergy, is most calumnious and
untrue : and as it affects laymen, is hardly less so." I
must certainly then misconceive what simony is, for almost
every day do I see it in the newspapers (I am at my news-
paper authorities again, you see) ; almost every day do I
see clergymen advertising for the purchase of the next pre-
sentation to a living. I see four thousand and six thousand
pounds offered : I see the income of the living to be pre-
sented, stipulated for four, five, six, or more hundreds a
year. Are not these offers to commit simony ? But you
again declare — " simony can only be perpetrated through
the instrumentality of a clergyman, and this instrumentality
is so closely fenced against by the oath solemnly imposed

18 VINDICATION.

upon every incumbent previous to his admission to the living,
and no one ever has, or ever can commit this act, without
committing, at the same time, the most dreadful and
aggravated perjury, for the oath itself is one, of all upon
the statute book, the strongest, and such as no sophistry
can evade."

By what means your brethren manage to accommodate
their consciences to this dreadful and aggravated perjury,
you, it seems, do not know, and how should I? but that
they do it will quickly be shewn ; and I am afraid that
you are so much educated in the practice of swearing at
your Universities, and at your taking Orders, that you
learn to think with Hudibras, " Oaths are but words, and
words but wind."

Oh ! blasphemous ! the Book of life is made

A superstitious instrument, on which

We gabble o'er the oaths we mean to break :

All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,

Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,

The rich, the poor, the old man and the young ;

All, all make up one scheme of perjury,

That faith doth reel; the very name of God

Sounds like a juggler's charm; and, bold with joy,

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,

Portentous sight! the owlet, Atheism,

Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,

Drops his blue-fiinged lids, and holds them close,

And hooting at the glorious sunlit heaven,

Cries out, "Where is it?"

Coleridge.

Do you still doubt ? Let us put the matter to the test !
Let us take up the St. James's Chronicle, — it is a paper in
good repute with both you and me. Here it is. We will
take up the first half-dozen papers that come to hand. Let
us see; — they are papers of different dates, from the begin-
ning of this present year, up to April. Ah ! what is that I
observe? One, two, three, four, five! advertisements for
the purchase of presentations by clergymen in these six
papers! Is it possible? Notwithstanding your solemn

VINDICATION. 19

pledging of the word and honour of a priest, there are no
less than five of these same virtuous clergymen attempting
the sin of Simon Magus in these six papers! By what
most planet-stricken fatality have you offered yourself as
the champion of a church of whose daily proceedings and
condition you are either most amazingly ignorant, or for
which you have voluntarily exhibited yourself in the odious
character of a most unexampled fabulator? I spare you
the plain epithet. Instead, therefore, of asking me, with a
strange absurdity of triumph, " what now becomes of all
your slanders and groundless charges on innocent clergy-
men?"— I must turn and ask you — is it not enough that
your brethren daily disgrace the profession of Christ's
ministers by the most shameless bartering in holy things,
but that you should stand forth their most simple, or most
truthless champion? Is it not enough that you have con-
victed them of the most dreadful and aggravated perjury,
but you must quote Paley to pass sentence on them? I
will give his words, and two of the advertisements as they
stand together in St. James's Chronicle of April 6-9; and
then, after again asking you if I did not justly charge your
church with being in an awful state, where this private
patronage exists to the extent of 8,000 out of 10,000 livings;
if I were not amply justified in saying that these livings
must necessarily go, not to the poor pious man, but to the
highest bidder? — I shall leave you to the just opinion of
every honest mind.

These are Paley's words as given by you : — " The sale of
advowsons is inseparable from the allowance of private
patronage; as patronage would otherwise devolve to the
most indigent, and for that reason the most improper
hands it could be placed in. Nor did the law ever intend
to prohibit the passing of advowsons from one patron to
another ; but to restrain the patron, ivho possesses the right
of presenting at the vacancy, from being influenced, in tJie
choice of his presentee, by a bribe or benefit to himself. It
is the same distinction with that which obtains in a free-
holder's vote for his Representative in Parliament. The
right of voting, that is, the freehold to which the right pertains,
may be bought and sold as freely as any other property ;
c2

20 VINDICATION.

but the exercise of that right — the vote itself — may not be
purchased, or influenced by money."

Church Preferment. — Wanted to purchase, the
advowson or next presentation, with prospect of early
possession, to a Living of from 200/. to 500/. per annum,
in an agreeable neighbourhood, within a day's journey of
London. Population not exceeding 1000. A good genteel
house, or one which might easily be rendered so, is indis-
pensable. The county of Kent or Surrey would be pre-
ferred.

Address, stating particulars, to the Rev. S. T., care of
Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., booksellers, Cornhill, London.

To the Church.— From 4000/. to 6000/. ready to be
advanced in the purchase of a next presentation, or next
presentation and advowson of adequate value, with the
prospect of immediate possession. Situation must be
upland, and from 30 to 100 miles from London, with a
good residence.

All letters, containing every information, to be addressed,
post paid, to Messrs. Burfoot, Solicitors, Temple, London.

I have thus at once proved the daily, barefaced simo-
niacal corruption of your clerical brethren, and your own
strange contempt of truth. For myself I have therefore
done with you ; but there are two remarks as it regards
others, to which I shall give a momentary attention — one
on Dissenters generally — one on my own Society.

You have evidently kept an anxious eye on the proceed-
ings of dissenters. You ask me, do their ministers not
receive hire? They do. Who doubts it? But there is this
difference between their payment and yours — theirs is the
voluntary offering of their hearers — yours is wrung from
the funds of a reluctant and dissenting nation. But you
have found a separation — a building of a new chapel — an
engagement of an additional minister, in this town. Well,
then, there is more room, and there are more ministers to
benefit the people. To point out to me a solitary case of
division amidst a kingdom full of* flourishing dissenters,
shews, not their defects, but your anxiety. Could you
even shew that dissent and freedom of choice in ministers
was generally attended with differences of opinion, I would

VINDICATION. 21

still say, give me that freedom of opinion, with all its evils,
rather than no freedom, no choice at all — rather than my
conscience — the consciences of a whole congregation —
should be the slaves of one layman. But the steady progress
of dissent is the most triumphant answer to your questions ;
and never did you make a more unhappy remark than that
in which you specify the alternation of Methodist ministers
as a particular evil. John Wesley understood the human
heart, and knew how to provide for it ; and the most con-
vincing test of his sagacity is, that after a career of only
ninety-five years, his system counts upwards of a million of
adherents in different parts of the world.

Amid the multiplicity of criticisms which my little
volume has already elicited, I have often been asked, why
I did not attack priestcraft also among the dissenters. This
is my answer. Whether it exists amongst them or not, I
neither now attempt to deny or admit. If it does exist,
while they plague only themselves with it — it concerns
very little any hut themselves. Let them attempt to saddle
the nation with it, and they will then become legitimate
objects of censure, and I will be one of the first to assail
them.

■ A parting word on my own Society. — I pass your attempt
to excite my family against me, for it has made them happy
with a hearty laughter. But you fain would shake me in
the good opinion of the Society of Friends. Now, is it
because I have exposed priestcraft that you would have
Friends ashamed of me ? Alas, master ! then must they
be most assuredly ashamed of themselves. If there be one
society the steady enemies of priestcraft, it is theirs. They
have a set of old worthies, whose writings they silently, but
fervently admire — George Fox, who commenced his career
by reproving one of your predecessors in your own church
of St. Mary's, and a whole host of coadjutors, who said
many hard things of priests, and consequently suffered
many hard things from them. They have " The Memoirs
of John Roberts," one of the most irresistibly amusing,
and cruelly witty books in the world. John always gets
the parson down and never lets him get up again. This
is justly a favourite work. — I propose one day to make it
better known. They delight in reading the " Journal of

22 VINDICATION.

Job Scott," in which occurs this remarkable passage: —
" The clergy form a dark eclipse between God and men's
souls : and when I am dead, let no one attempt to soften
this expression, for it is the truth." They have always
repudiated your hireling altars, even in marriage and in
death. It was to William Penn, the Quaker, that his
father, Admiral Penn, said on his death-bed, " Son Wil-
liam, if you and your friends are faithful, you will make
an end of priests and priestcraft to the end of the world ! "
And will they be faithful? Yes! You may imagine them,
if you look on them, meek and gentle — why, so you would
imagine me ; — but trust not to their outward man ! They
are by nature, by education, by faith, by the memory of
cruel ills, and, what is better, by the love of the law of
Christ, who proclaimed the free and immutable gospel — the
sternest, steadiest, most immitigable adversaries of a state
religion. They are this, or they are apostates to the faith
which their ancestors purchased in prisons and with blood !
I have done. — My volume on Priestcraft is the product
of public duty, not of inclination. I now turn again to
works of a more congenial description, and shall not
attempt to add any future vindication to what I have here
given, once for all. As a man, you are unknown to me; —
as a minister of Christ, if evil speaking and deadly calumny
be qualifications for your office, then you are a most Chris-
tian minister. Whatever good wishes you have on behalf
of my peace and salvation, be assured I have not the less
for yours. My warfare is not with you, but with your
system.

Yours, &c. &c.

WILLIAM HOWITT.

Nottingham, July 15th, 1833.

P. S. I have to return my sincere thanks to numerous
individuals who, since the first edition appeared, have offered
me a mass of evidence, enough, of itself, to form a volume,

VINDICATION. 23

on the conduct of the clergy ; on the grievances and indig-
nities received at their hands in cases of baptisms, marriages,
and burials; on the desecration of burial grounds; on the
enormous amount and abuse of property attached to ca-
thedrals, &c. ; and especially on the brokerage of church
livings at public offices in London, established for that pur-
pose ; and on that still more infamous brokerage of curacies,
by which the ill-paid labourers of the church, are mulct of
part of the meagre salaries secured to them by law. All
this matter, it is obvious, cannot be comprehended in a
sheet already pretty well filled, but I pledge myself it shall
not be lost.

Nottingham, July 23d, 1833.

To be had of all Booksellers, price Five Shillings,

WILLIAM HOWITT'S
HISTORY OF PRIESTCRAFT IN ALL AGES.

A PROPHECY.

" We predict for this work a popularity and utility equal
to those of any book of the season ; but as for Mr. Howitt,
the clergy will be ready to 'swallow him up quick.'" —
Christian Advocate, June 17th.

11 All who fatten on the delusions which disgrace religion,
will denounce its author as an atheist, an infidel, a leveller,
&c; but let not our countrymen be again deceived with
this stale manoeuvre." — Weekly Dispatch, June 23.

THE PROPHECY SPEEDILY FULFILLED.

" His conceptions of Christianity are, that Christ came to
bring freedom into the world. * * * He is coarse and
vulgar in style. * * * Antichristian in spirit. * * *
Ignorant and absurd. * * * * Radical in politics —
Socinianized in belief. • * * Turbulent and mischievous.
* * * A dunce. * * * A professor of bombast and
rhodomontade. * « * He scorns his God. * * * He
has written himself fiend in every page. * * * A paltry
atom of a fiend, * * * A toad. * * * A viper!!!"
British, or Clerical Magazine, July 1st.

VINDICATION.

A COUNTER-BLAST TO CLERICAL BILLINGSGATE.

" That such a man as William Howitt can have no object
in exposing priestcraft, but to serve true religion and true
liberty, will be believed by all, except those who, if an angel
from heaven were to denounce the state-creed, would declare
him an enemy to the Church, and an infidel. We can see,
that with all the gentleness of Christian feeling, the author,
in exposing the errors and abuses produced by the union of
Church and State, cannot avoid the expression of a virtuous
indignation." — Manchester Times. — June 29.

A WISE CAUTION.

" We candidly avow our wish, that this work should not
be read at this juncture" — Metropolitan Magazine, now
edited by a Conservative.

" It is as bold and uncompromising a denunciation of the
system as ever issued from the press of this or any other
country. It shews Mr. Howitt to be intimately acquainted
with history, and especially the history of religion, ancient
and modern. Many passages are not more remarkable
for the sterling sense they exhibit, than for the eloquent
style in which they are composed."

Liverpool Albion, July 1 .

" A splendid piece of eloquence, and reminds us a good
deal of the prose of Milton." — Athenceum.

"On the Ecclesiastical Courts and Universities, Mr.
Howitt has some striking observations."

Monthly Review, July 1 .

" Such a book as this needs from us no recommendation
as a passport; its eloquence, its power, its truth, will find
a way to every heart alive to a sense of true religion and
true liberty. It will be read and valued by every man who
is a lover of his God, and of his fellow-men."

Brighton Guardian, July 3.

" We have great pleasure in noticing this work, which is
well adapted to the spirit and necessities of the present

28 VINDICATION.

which

effected. In the latter portions of the volume, those
relate to the present condition and practices of the Church
of England, there is a dignity, a beauty, and a richness of
style, with a distinctness of poetical conception, and an
elevation of sentiment, that reminds us strongly of the
prose works of Milton.

" We hope that this little book will widely circulate, and
that it will aid in bringing on that spiritual renovation which
is so pre-eminently to be desired for our country."

Monthly Repository, July 1 .

THE END.

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